I am a cynical person that conciously goes for lawful and non-destructive option, while I love a good corruption arc in my entertainment (Breaking Bad is the best series ever camp here), I cannot understand this trend of empathetic individuals trying to argue not guilty for absolute monsters when presented with humanly relateable story of descent into madness. Guys, stop whitewashing Snapes and Arthases and whoever. Actions matter, and when we talk about many deaths, malicious or not, intent is only relevant for the harsher sentence. These characters are villains. Good, compelling, relatable ones, but that's it. PS: I may start a war in comment section, but this is something that bothers me greatly personally as a trend. I am Russian citizen (not for long) and I know very well of scopes and twisted nature of this affliction irl. I keep hearing misplaced compassion from our gentle souled liberals that fled the cuntry first, how they are so so teary-sorry for Ukrainians but whine 'our booooys thooo are victims tooo, let's fund them so that in the frontlines they have comfy socks'. In the frontlines where they loot and pillage and raze to the ground property of citizens of a sovereign country. And when I tell these inviduals 'our boys' are criminals the moment they step across the border or load an artillery round, they look at me as if I am demon from hell that came to torment them with international legalese and Nuremberg trials and cases of Yugoslavian militias being prosecutad from all sides (though Serbs the most because of disproportionate amount of crimes against civilians and their sheer brutality, ofc). Misplaced empathy for abusers and psychos for me comes third place only to manipulation from a victim stance practiced by vulnerable narcissists, and then simple self-righteous and/or sadistic predation and bullying being the top of the top of human shit I can absolutely not take in real life but love observing in good entertainment.
Yess, Breaking Bad is amazing. I love a good corruption arc too, just as much I love a good villain redemption arc like Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. Honestly, this is exactly why I'm trying to challenge ideas like this. I know most people are probably going to say "Oh, it's just a video game/entertainment" or "fantasy morality is different from real world morality" or something like that but stories have a greater purpose than just entertainment. A great movie is "The Northman" which is a retelling of Amleth the Dane, which is the story Hamlet is based off of. It's about a character who is in a cycle of violence and has the chance to break that cycle but doesn't, and ends up dead. The Star Wars prequel movies are about how a democracy can turn into a dictatorship and what to watch out for AND how a good man can become evil. And then of course there's Arthas as this video is about. These all have valuable lessons to teach us, and for someone to choose to ignore those lessons because they simply like a character is mind boggling to me.
@@AlexBarrGameDev as an outsider, it's so bizzare and unbelievable it's nauseating. Worst thing is now sweet summer children who did not inherit with mother's milk eerie awareness of Gulag and special agents and all Orwellian goodies from the old regime shy away from even trying to stay aware of primordial darkness lurking still in many places in the world, and, like legacy diseases creeping back where vaccination went lax, they are allowed to creep back. Vonnegut to them is confusing, and I won't even talk about Three Body Problem here, the discussion went along the lines 'westerners discover how people from totalitarian societies feel about world and are in total denial', Apocalypse now is not flashy enough to be a blockbuster, need AI to plant a Homelander somewhere in there, Oppenheimer and Schindler's List are unrelateable and boring and 'too white and male', if they ever bother to watch even. And so we get 300 IQ writing of Галя Электродрель (Galina Electric Drill, this is how we locally called that guyladriel) in Rings of Power frame by frame reenacting our pretty (disturbing) Arian officer threatening and drawing blood from incapacitated captive but supposed to be a hero, and total inability to process reality to the detriment of all, because these people vote too. 🤡🌍
it's weird because the same people will say Sylvanas is irredeemable. I think it' all boils down to edgy dudes who see themselves in Arthas... and by themselves, I mean someone who is willing to commit horrific violence for what they believe to be 'right'.
If anyone wants to portray Arthas as a villain because "actions matter" I at least expect them to offer any better course of action than the ones he took. And no speculations are not enough. You are Arthas, you just realized your kingdom is threatened with an imminent annihilation by a plague that the wisest among your kin are unaware of and would need significant time to comprehend and maybe cure while any moment wasted means the plague spreads further and further until it becomes impossible to stop. There, make a choice better than what Arthas did
Totally disagree with Stratholm. 1) He took the city and burned bodies 2) he killed all undead So pretty much no one was turned into undead and Malganis wasn't able to gather huge army
He culled about half the city at most before leaving them on their own (if we are going by how things happened in Warcraft 3). The remaining unplagued citizens did the burning. He didn’t kill all the undead, they just left once Arthas left as corrupting him was the goal
@@AlexBarrGameDev He killed those that ate the plagued grain, and they were turning into the undead; is that not a thing any of you seem to remember? Not everyone in the city ate the grain, there were still some unplagued citizens remaining, even if very few.
@@AlexBarrGameDev What? That's not what happened. The undead left once Arthas had deprived them of the infected in the city and he followed them, not the other way around. Remember? Malganis did that whole teleporting-away-thing. Arthas didn't personally burn the corpses but... that seems like such a minor grievance compared to everything else that is going on. He didn't personally burn them in the previous missions, either, so what? Even if those had started rising as skeletons, he still wouldn't have made the situation any worse if he hadn't shown up at all.
Things to note about Arthas caracter : - As demonstreted , Arthas starts off Human Campaing good alingned , but , for each mission that you complete , he starts to become more and more angry and desperate for a solution to the plague mystery - During the defence of Hearthglen , Arthas is the only person who *knows* that the plague turns the infected into undead instead of just being deadly (He also saw how a normal ass peasent that turns into a Ghoul/Zombie can go toe to toe with a trained and armed footman as seen in the introduction of the mission where some troops are training and some of them just die to the newly turned peasants , even tho they were well prepared for it) and he almost gets overwhelmed by the undead army , if it wasen´t for Uther saving him , Arthas would be dead. - Arthas was wrong/right about the culling - right because it was the fastest way to reduce the number of potencial numbers for the undead , saving commoners from an ill fate (Would you rather get slowly eaten by a ghoul or get a fast death by a giant hammer ?) and also Mal´Ganis was in the city so the situation just went from bad to worse. - Wrong because the culling itself goes against everything about being a paladin from the holy church , it´s immoral , killing his own people leaves the survivors (if any) scarred for life and Arthas also fired uther Final note : There wasen´t much solution to the Stratholme problem - Not enough time to plan something - Not a way to identify infected from non infected (Since there wasen´t any mage there , and Jaina wasen´t trained on that regard) - Trying to ´´Quarentine´´ the city would be a disaster , the number of commoners on stratholme alone outnumbers artha´s army (wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stratholme#:~:text=In%20its%20glory%20days%2C%20Stratholme%20housed%20nearly%2025%2C000%20people.) source - No way to ´´heal´´ the disease since even today on wow lore , there wasen´t been invented a cure to the plague , not even super powerfull beings can save you from it , as seen in wotlk where a crusader gets infected and not even a Naaru/Aspect/Druid can stop the Plague
All excellent points, I agree there was no perfect way to handle Stratholme. As for what choice I'd prefer, that's one of the problems I have with Arthas' solution. Because even if I prefer Arthas coming into the city, my neighbour might not. Arthas is depriving the citizens of their free will - maybe a citizen didn't eat any grain and would have been able to escape the city had Arthas let them fend for themselves. But the free-will of the citizens alone, isn't enough to say Arthas' plan shouldn't be utilized. I think the best way to handle stratholme (aside from just straight up heading back to Lordaeron) would have been for Arthas to explain enough about the plague to convince Uther to kill only zombies, which Uther probably would have agreed to. Between Arthas, Uther and Jaina, one could have focused on fighting Mal'Ganis, one could have focused on fighting the zombies as they turn and the other could focus on fighting the undead army/establish some sort of quarantine/barricade to keep the city contained as best as possible. Still not ideal, still has many flaws, but I think it would have been the better alternative
@@AlexBarrGameDev Arthas didin´t have time to explain the effects of the plague to Uther , let alone make an strategy to contain a humungus amount of undead . - The citizens of Strat wouldn´t have the slight ideia about the plagued grain, So even if some of them didin´t eat the grain themselves , Family member/Neighbors that ate it would ravage the city from within - Best way to deal with the Strat situation is to Jaina make an emergency call teleport to dalaran and calls as many magic users as possible , make them cast/maintain the spell that was used on dalaran (the one that kills undead pretty fast) on the city , while arthas and co deal with malganis.
@@fllintvancleff2110 I agree 100% with the last two points, especially with the Dalaran plan - that probably would have been the best way to deal with it. But I very much disagree with the first point. I get speed is important here, but at the cost of losing that much support, which he desperately needs? And how long would it actually take to tell Uther what he needs to know about the plague in this situation - 5 minutes? I don't imagine it would have even taken that long
@@fllintvancleff2110 Those spells didnt exist until much later though. Which is exactly why Arthas made the right call. Even after the mages got a closer look into the plague it took them quite a while to figure out how to counter it and later use said spells against Arthas. If Arthas let the mages handle stratholme all infected citizens would turn on their people long before the dalaran mages had any clue on how to counter the plague. Arthas had no time to waste trying to convince anyone because nobody had seen first hand just how powerful this plague was like he did. It was even futile to try and convince Uther to give up hope on the people of Stratholme because he just would not believe that they were beyond salvation
@@Porkey798 "Made the right call" for who? No one, literally no one benefitted from Arthas' decision. For him it was this moment that truly damned him, and as a result his entire kingdom. Yes there's no good solution here. But let's not pretend he did the 'right thing'. Or made anything but an emotional snap decision to kill an entire city. While also refusing to explain to his loyal companions why, losing all support, and eventually even getting him recalled. In no way did this actually improve anything, it made it drastically worse.
20:36 Also, that's a gross simplification of what's the motives of Lich King (or at least, Ner'zhul part of him) was. Planet can go fuck itself, the fight against the Legion was never about the survival. It was about Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Because when someone skins your soul alive (as well as the pathetic amount of people you've managed to walk with you through haphazard dimensional gate) and traps you into shadowfrost crystal, it becomes kinda personal.
When you think about it, Warcraft 3 is a happy story about the man who lost everything, building from the ashes while being under watchful ire of dreadlords, playing them and their master, building and army, sabotaging Legion to the point Archimonde - the brother of his very nemesis - dies so hard he explodes, and even acquiring the body of his own, finally being free and ready for a big rumble Scourge vs Legion.
@@who41683 that was a retcone made by a stupid book nobody cares about. Exact game events and dialogues contradict it and prove LK is both Arthas and Ner'zhul.
I believe that Artas did only one thing wrong, the thing that weren't even mentioned in the video - when King Therenas called back his troops he hired mercenaries to burn his peoples ships and then lied to his men that the mercenaries burned the ships on their own, not on his behalf. Muradin mentiones that before talking up the frostmourne Arthas lied to his men and betrayed his mercenaries. It was a narrative highlight for Arthas descent. Everything before that was perfectly justified, everything after was Arthas under the effect of frostmourne and as such he was deprived of his free will. I always found the narrative around Arthas during these 2 campaigns (Human and Undead) very weird and muddled. For exemple it is apparent to me that in second mission when Arthas is angered by the orcs it is supposed to foreshadow his later descent because Uther warns him that if bloodlust would take hold of them they would be as bad as the orcs. It's a weird remark given that the orcs got to be killed and they kidnapped and sacrificed people but it always seemed to me like a clumsy writing. As for the matter of Death Knight Arthas being himself or not - I am aware that narratively considering Undead Arthas as a separate character that was possessed by Frostmorune is very boring, bland and there is no chance that it was authorial intent in this case. However by Arthas own admission he no longer felt any remorse or grief after picking up Frostmourne and we do know that Lich king managed to mind control his minions which also would include Arthas, which practically does absolve human Arthas of Undead Arthas deeds. Everybody has their shadow, however we do generally manage to control it, Arthas on the other hand was apparently magically deprived of that ability. We get to learn more about him though his undead shadow but everybody has urges, the key moral element - our will and ability to control these urges, was absent in Death Knight Arthas. As for the matter of Stratholme, to me it always looked like a form of trolley problem. If a train would run over 5 people should you redirect it to run over only one person? Except that in Arthas case it seems like that one person would have died anyways so it seemed even clearer that Arthas was in the right. The arguments that Arthas made a bad call were always weird. Like it weren't really communicated well that culling was futile in the goal of stopping the scourge. The narrative was focus at how horrible was Arthas decision to kill citizens of Stratholme without really explaining why. Explanation that the dead would be risen anyways doesn't vibe with me that much because then Scourge wouldn't need any plague, they could just storm all th graveyards, also it was never even implied that infested people upon being killed would rise from the plague anyways. The interlude after culling showed people burning the dead which as a child always seemed to me like a dramatic way of performing burial but now I can see it as a very effective measure against the corpses being risen. Medive comments about Arthas work being futile seemed more like him just wanting to convince Jaina to go to Kalimdor. People like to say that there were no good choice for Arthas during Stratholme situation. That no matter what he would do he would be a monster which is the tragic element. Still I don't think that this is a good argument for culling being immoral. I remember that I heard once somebody doing some talk with a philosopher and saying that Ethics are difficult matter - to do evil or good and the philosopher replied that this is a very easy choice - do good, the problem is when you have to choose between two evils. In real life we frequently struggle to fight our dark urges and do good rather than evil despite the difficult situations that we face. However, frequently we face a different moral difficulty, our own personal cullings of Stratholme in which we have to choose between evil and lesser evil and we have to judge which one is the lesser one. Voting for candidate we deem improper for the office being the most mundane example that comes to mind. So we need to ask ourselves - if a person would face trolley problem - would they really be immoral no matter what they do? Is being evil a matter of mere circumstance, does the fact alone that we face morally difficult situations makes us evil because no matter what we do something horrible will happen? How can you be considered immoral just because you had no choice but to do something horrible?
i will say when muradin said what was engraved on the stone, the player knew what it ment. As did Arthas, The moment Arthas touched the unfrozen frostmourne it reaped his soul first and Arthas no longer was in-control of his body, he could only watch as a by-stander what his body was doing. One of the books outside of WC/WoW explains that during the halls of reflection when the lich king was about to finish off Jaina by choking her to death. Arthas's Soul screamed out that he wouldn't let that happen, which is why the lich king lost control for a second in halls of reflection and makes a remark about the "stupid" necklace around his neck he couldn't touch. The necklace was a conduit/tether even though a weak tether was what let his soul influence his body slightly. It showed that although he could never fully regain control of his body, he could under extreme worry? love? halt the lich king for a few seconds. It was only after tirion shattered frostmourne did arthas's soul reconnect fully with his body for the first time in years. Which although shadowlands was eh, sanctum showed that when frostmourne shattered ner'zhul and arthas split and his weakened soul was used as to temper anduins sword to continue arthas's torture. So even when arthas was finally glad he had been stopped the jailer forced him to relive those moments through anduine. The jailer didn't need to temper kingsmourne with arthas's soul because the shadow crystal imbued in the sword was enough but having someone forced and dominated once more after feeling relieved it's over is such delicious torture since that's what he was obviously known for finding the most twisted ways to torture souls in the maw.
Thing about Arthas, he had full autonomy as death knight, since Ner'Zhul had to reach out to him to warm him about the ambush he was heading into as well as their connection fading due to Illidan's attack on Icecrown. Thus Ner'zhul was not omnipresent to control or even influence Arthas when he was on the eastern kingdoms. Using his autonomy in creepy and sadistic violation and torturing of Sylvanas. Ner'zhul didn't care about personal grievances so long as his goals are achieved, whereas defilement and borderline r@pe imagery of Sylvanas' torture in the comics which he was carrying out himself for near a year according to the story, felt and were painted as sadist, cruel and personal by both comics and WC3. Even in the Sealed Chest where he kept his most priced keepsakes, amongst all the heartwarming items, he kept vial of the Blood of Sylvanas from days of him torturing her.
5:22 "To think that Arthas could take on Malganis is insane." But he... literally won. Sure, Malganis might have been holding back to give him a chance, for some reason, but if he hadn't done anything, all of Stratholm would have died that night.
He did nothing wrong in Stratholme, it's better to kill a person while they are still human, instead of letting them become undead (which would have happened). It slows down the spread of the disease, and since the souls exists in this universe - people are suffering when they are undead, so killing them is an act of mercy.
Yeah sure, I agree that that is probably a better fate for the infected, but here’s the problem, not everyone ate the grain as seen in the cinematic following the culling mission. Now I’d bring up the whole free will problem when it comes to the entirety of the citizens of stratholme, but even if we ignore that and say it was for the greater good to cull the infected citizens, both for their good and the rest of the kingdom, you can’t really say that for the citizens who didn’t eat the grain and they would otherwise have had the chance to flee the city
@@AlexBarrGameDevEveryone that didn't eat the grain, would have been killed by people that did eat the grain though. The fact there are people in the cinematic only proves that the Culling saved lives of the people that weren't infected
@@AlexBarrGameDev Actually, you can say that it was for the greater good. If the plagued citizens from Stratholme got out of the city, it would have been much worse for the kingdom at the time. Nevermind that Arthas would eventually come back and lead the Cult of the Damned; but at that moment, after Stratholme was culled, the kingdom of Lordaeron was free of the undead scourge and it's cult. Mal'ganis always was going to try to corrupt Arthas, but in all respects, the Cult of the Damned it's hold on Lordaeron because of Arthas and what he did.
Sometimes, the only good choice is evil. That's life. Stratholme was the correct choice. An entire town worth of undead is another ARMY of undead. Removing that from the playing field is a strategic necessity to win the war. The incorrect choice was not taking the five minutes on horseback to explain the issue to Uther and Jaina. You can ride and talk at the same time. Speaking from experience here.
I feel like the whole "killing the people of Stratholme would have done nothing, the Devs themselves said so" is a bad argument, because how would Arthas know that? As far as he could tell, killing someone and burning their corpse would ensure that they would not feed the Scourge more strength. I'm not saying this to justify Arthas' actions, he still did terrible things, but the only truly morally evil thing I can think off the top of my head was burning the ships at Northrend and blaming it on the mercenaries he himself hired. I'm probably missing a lot of stuff, it's been ages since I last played WC3.
Most of the people in the city weren't plagued if we go by modern lore to the point of Arthas feeling relief once the people in Stratholme start fighting back against his men, if we go by Warcraft 3 lore, well. Most people weren't infected either and the following cinematic shows a lot of Stratholme's survivors burning the city and their own dead. So he didn't even burn the dead of Stratholme, he left them to rot in the streets so he could travel to Northrend.
@@DominionSorcererAnd yet every single building you destroy has people that will turn in 3 seconds inside it. The city was going to die. The difference is the culling resulted in the scourge having to lose their forces to try to get these and they haven't been successful at gaining as much ghouls as they hoped. It also stopped them from being able to parade into the next city. And spreading the infection there. I really don't see much difference between the culling mission and literally every zombie movie out there
@@RancorSnp That was the thing alot of people say shut the gates contact dalaran and the king take time to have a get together, devise a plan and think on it. As if Stratholme only had 1 entrance, it had 3-4 entrances and two of them were controlled by Mal'Ganis. So shutting the two gates and leaving the 2 Mal'Ganis had open, would have just escalated the undead population. Had they waited for Dalaran archmages to decide and contest if they should infact take a look into stratholme or not intervene. The king had to contest with his advisors and the nobles about their input and if they think the story is true or not or if Arthas is just being a immature spoiled prince stomping about to try and play hero. It could have potentially took days for Dalaran to decide their choice, and the advisors/nobles would take weeks because they never seen anyone undead walking around or skeletons? They would need some kind of "proof" like a "live" zombie or ghoul but it could just be a person arthas hired to pretend to be a so called "zombie." Meanwhile, Mal'Ganis is prancing around Stratholme increasing his army by turning household by household, while Arthas, Uther, and Jaina wait for a message on the verdict if either of these two forces have made a decision or not. Once everyone finally gives their verdict on assisting or not, they come up with a viable plan to save the unplagued villagers from the undead, only to open the gates once more and the whole city is undead. Then Ma'Ganis would just have to tell arthas he's going to northerend follow him, or stay behind to deal with the massive undead army that is Stratholme because your indecisions caused a much bigger dilemma.
Bringing up the level designer is problematic, because the guy made a video where he compares the Scourge to real-life diseases, and how we don't wipe entire cities because of a virus. This is already kind of suspicious. Just how can he compare an irl disease to a fantasy undead curse? The way he backs up his sentence is questionable at the least, I don't think anyone would disagree. On the Stratholme mission, some people may disagree with Arthas about his decision, but then they would do no better than Uther and Jaina. Arthas was reckless, but it won't change the fact that Uther wasn't really interested to hear his reasoning either. As his elder and teacher, Uther shouldn't have abandoned Arthas because of his hot-headed behaviour, and should have tried to understand what made his pupil come to this conclusion. The problem is, Uther and Jaina really just abandon him for no other reason than "there must be another way", they didn't really wish to cooperate as far as we can tell from their lines. Its like if Uther just got offended by the way Arthas talked to him, which might fit another character, but not an old and wise mentor. While Arthas is quite overzealous, he really makes the only good decision regarding the city, based on his own knowledge (which is also right). The campaign before the Culling of Stratholme isn't long either, so its not like we missed a great detail. We only see these undead being relentless, large in numbers, and extremely dangerous. Even if there was a way to heal the sick, there was no way for them to find out. When people try to defy that cleansing Stratholme was the bad decision, they don't want to look at it from both perspectives. And I also think they forget how Uther and Jaina just backed up from Arthas the moment he needed them the most. Shouldn't friends and mentors help you when you are about to make a reckless decision, when you aren't in a clear state of mind? Just a question. While he is an adult person, and completely responsible of his own actions, Arthas's downfall is not just his mistake alone :D Then he becomes obsessed with Mal'Ganis, and this is when Arthas truly begins to make wrong decisions. Like disobeying his father's order, and burning down the ships. And after that, ordering his men to kill the "monsters" we hire as mercenaries, in order to avoid losing their loyalty. Then when Muradin confronts him about this, he just dismisses him. When they find the Frostmourne, Arthas just surrenders himself to revenge and takes up the Frostmourne. These are his only evil decisions, and no one could possibly prove that they weren't a cause of Arthas's weakness. After this, we clearly know that Death Knight Arthas is a different person. In the cutscene after the last mission of the human campaign, the following is written: "Tormented by Frostmourne's maddening voice, Arthas lost the last vestiges of his sanity" and "Now, driven by the sword's dark will, Arthas plans to return home to Lordaeron and claim his just reward..." Even the story tells us that he went insane, and his original self is not in control anymore. There is no questioning this, as its stated in the game. Overall, I think saying that Arthas did nothing wrong isn't right, but many of the points both Hirumaredx and you bring up, don't cover the full picture. I wonder if either of you at least replayed or watched the campaign in Warcraft 3 to back up your points. Which would be important since, you know, its the original source :D
Comparing it to an IRL virus may not be a 1:1 comparison to a magical plague but it’s the closest thing we have to compare - especially if we look at older plagues of our own like the Black Death which killed half of Europe, or even how leperacy was handled. there could hypothetically be some kind of disease that could turn people zombie-like and trying to figure out how to deal with that does it really matter if the cause is magical or biological? Still, I think it would be unfair to compare it to how we treat viruses as a modern society, but rather compare it to how a real world medieval society would have handled it. As for uther and jaina, yeah they made some mistakes. Uther didn’t handle the situation well at all and he is responsible to a certain degree for Arthas’ fall. But it’s not unreasonable for their reaction - in the same sense that even though the best way to defeat the scourge was for the humans to head to kalimdor, who in their right mind would have listened to medivh, some random madman saying the whole human society has to get up to leave and head to some forgotten continent across the sea. Uther and jaina reacted poorly because they didn’t have the information Arthas had and he sounded unhinged from that view point. Everybody says “well Arthas didn’t have time” to explain the whole situation but is that really true? How long would it actually have taken to explain the situation to uther - 5 minutes? Maybe 10? And had he explained the situation, putting the question on uther “what should we do” would uther come to an entirely different decision? It may have varied slightly like “don’t kill citizens before they turn” but he probably would have seen the logic and helped Arthas out. And what military operation doesn’t have a briefing before engaging in a significant operation as that mission is. Saying “you’d do no better” is probably true, but it’s really irrelevant when we are analyzing the best course of action, particularly if you are making the case that what happened was the ONLY course of action. I wont argue with the point on frostmourne. But pre frostmourn, Arthas has consistent behaviour- acting rashly out of anger, ignoring his friends and mentors and that includes the culling. Had he taken the time to slow down, assess the situation and confer with uther and jaina they could either have come up with a better solution, or maybe even realize that their wasn’t a better one, but at least in that case they’d have gone into the city together and that could’ve made the difference when it comes to Arthas’ turn to becoming a death knight
@@AlexBarrGameDev I think its even worse in his case, because the level designer didn't even go deeper into it. He just said that if someone doesn't see it like he does, they should seek medical help :DD Well, comparing Arthas to a random nobody isn't right either. Nobody had any idea who even was this person, is there a truth to anything he says? They had no idea. At least with Arthas, they know him and that he wasn't a mad man
I would say Arthas did nothing wrong...until Northrend. At which point he did pretty much everything wrong. The Culling of Stratholme was MORALLY wrong at first glance... but when you think about it, would you rather turn into a zombie, or be killed before it happen? Assuming it was 100% going to happen (which it was). It was also strategically the right call. The whole "corpses become abominations so killing the people means nothing" thing is absolutely ridiculous. 1- If you kill them before they become undead, it's a mercy in addition to reducing the risks of death for your soldiers. 2- If you destroy the corpses, they can't be turned into anything. At all. What do you think would have been a better alternative to the Culling? Also, the whole horse thing? That was in the novel, which was written AFTER Warcraft 3 and therefore neither players nor mission designers had any inklings of that "foreshadowing", making it not foreshadowing at all, really. You can't foreshadow in a prequel. Medivh said Lordaeron was lost, not the whole Eastern Kingdom. The reason for going to Kalimdor was to fight the Burning Legion. I agree with the rest of your video.
That was my initial logic too when I first played the game. But when you beat the mission you see a cinematic where villagers are burning bodies... which means SOME of the villagers were not plagued, which means technically the only moral way to approach the scenario is to wait for them to turn into zombies. But there are definitely counter arguments to be made still, its a fascinating question
@@AlexBarrGameDev The biggest counter argument to this is, if you wait for them to turn in to zombies not only are they going to be dead anyways but there is a greater then zero chance you would lose men in killing the zombies and such after they turn. So on a pure numeric morality it was the objective thing to do.
@@John-ve4gm Well that’s the best argument I’ve heard yet for that side of the argument. I’m still of the opinion that going into stratholme was the wrong move in the first place regardless of which strategy you use, but since the mission is in stratholme, I’ll definitely be considering this argument
Yeah I don't think there's a perfect answer. It all boils down to Arthas acting like a general or king-to-be and not like a paladin. Maybe Arthas' morality would have been less screwed without the culling, but the city itself was screwed anyway. We also don't know for sure if the people burning the dead were locals (unless they say so, I don't remember). They could have come from a nearby town to help clean up.
"What do you think would have been a better alternative to the Culling?" Quarantine: Close the doors of the city and send the army to kill just the zombies, cause protecting people and killing monsters is their job, they know the risks and they are trained for that*, put the non-infected in a safe place separating them from the infected ones. In this context a question like "What's better to be turned into a zombie or to be killed by a soldier?" is a known model called "The False Dilemma". It's a kind of mental trap where one must necessarily choose A or B as the only alternatives, when actually there's also C, or a mix of them. So of course if there's not a cure someone have to die but, infected people are still people and have free will, the final decision about their life is up to them, and them only, not Arthas. *Reality: "Ok guys you all now the mechanics right? Yea...WUT?! OMG n00b dnot stand in teh fire!!!!!11 Oh, it wasn't me, it's healer fault!!1 REmOve pet! AWW Sheeit AGGRROOOO!!!11one" ;)
I think the biggest example I have of this is Kerrigan. She is an absolutely terrible monster. Killed billions, got cleansed, killed billions again. Women, children, puppies and kittens, ripped apart and eaten alive by horrible creatures that most would view as demonic. Creatures she sent to the task with full knowledge of what she was doing, again and again. Yet I've met people who think she's a relatable 'good guy'. Quite a few, actually, and weirdly they've all been women. It's so disturbing. That said though, where Kerrigan and Arthas differ *is* intent. Arthas wasn't a good guy by any means, but intent matters so much in reality that it is hard coded into law when dispensing with sentencing. What he hoped to accomplish, what repercussions he caused willingly, how much control he had, the duress, all of it matters to such a degree that culture has come to accept them as mitigating factors that can even have somebody found innocent. Legally, he might have had most of his 'evil acts' barely punished. I'll say you're being disingenuous about the plagued grain. Those people were absolutely screwed. Trying to then claim that dead bodies can be made into abominations is also ridiculous as that involves surgery and work, additional energies, and can be done even if they let the people turn to zombies. There is also the peace of death argument where it is considered immoral to allow somebody to survive only to suffer. Timmy dying right before becoming undead was certainly a more compassionate fate than having him turn, for example.
To be fair, Kerrigan was under complete control of the Overmind for the first one (Mengsk's fault), and the second time was directed at The Dominion, which while there was a great deal of collateral damage, was something that needed to be done. She has a lot of blood on her hands, but is still a good guy. Oh yeah, and I guess she became a god and saved the universe or something too.
@@micahlehrke9 You have to understand that Kerrigan even before being infested was a ghost, which in the lore is the equivalent of a sanctioned assassin. Then once she became enthralled by the Overmind, I need to remind you that she broke free of it long before she was cleansed. You can argue she was 'tainted', but the whole reason for her being created was to be independent of the Overmind's full control. She then... kept genociding, as she saw herself as Zerg. Once cleansed, she was a human with some odd cartilage and such. As soon as she had the opportunity, she took control of Zerg and started going back to her old ways. As soon as she had the opportunity, she sent them at planets covered in civilians to delete the worlds. She didn't give any orders to prevent collateral damage, or oversee these events. This isn't the same as bombing a military installation in a country. This is extermination of a civilization that was mostly civilians, and culling of all the wildlife. Think of it this way: if in the cinematic, a puppy was in the way of Mengsk just being inconvenient, and she kicked it out a window to its death, through shattered glass, yowling in fear, would you call her a bitch? Evil? Now imagine that culling of the inconvenient on a scale which extends to babies, pregnant women, endangered species (or likely, the only of their kind only on said planet), entire ecosystems, ripped apart because she didn't want to give any nuanced orders or oversight to queens. If you really think an ex-ghost and perhaps the most powerful psionic in the three factions couldn't kill Mengsk without culling people, you're insane. She absolutely did not have to wipe out his forces. She didn't need to wipe out his fringe planets and cull them. She absolutely could have assassinated him. She wanted to kill. In spite.
8:52 - yeah Uther and Muradin tried to reason with him, especially Muradin. But not only because of his anger he didn't listen to them but also because of his arrogance and pride
"Then your choice is already made. Just remember, the harder you strive to slay your enemies, the faster you'll deliver your people right into their hands." -Medivh, the last guardian
Just a note, not to detract from the video itself but the video "Arthas Did Nothing Wrong" was an April Fools Joke. To take the premise and try to portray it in a way people would agree with despite the contrary being the case. Similar to how he made a "Garrosh Did Nothing Wrong" for an April Fools Joke several years prior.
Oh wow, thanks for the heads up! That definitely clears things up - BUT the only reason I found the video in the first place was because quite a few people in my last warcraft video were arguing a lot of the points in the “Arthas did nothing wrong” video.
Completely understandable, the way the videos are made are to try present the information in such a one-sided yet reasonable to convince people that's the truth of the matter. Which I imagine would fly over a lot of peoples heads! I mean the Garrosh one still has me on his side, despite knowing that its active propaganda and uses music/speeches in the background to make me see him as a tragic-hero figure.
I'm curious what would've happened if Uther and Jaina went to Northrend with him instead of just abandoning him. Could they have talked him out of taking frostmourne?
Jaina actually got stuck in the Emeral Nightmare where that happened and it ended with Jaina convincing Arthas not to take Frostmourne but then Mal Ganis killed him and she took forstmounre instead
@@jwilleseries7764eh that one is iffy considering it is Jainas nightmare how things would go wrong diferently. It is a nightmare not vision of altrenate timeline, it has as much validity as those nightmare instances at BFA end.
I disagree with Designer Dave. What is the point of showing us the humans who have eaten the infected grain transforming into undead in a prior mission if the exact same thing wasn’t going to happen? After you eat the grain, you are on a ticking clock, soon you will die and then revive. A whole city doing that at once would be disastrous. Would it not? (Also, arn’t Abominations corpses sewn together? They need to be created. They don’t just form).
Yup, in fact it’s so disastrous that it’s effectively a lost cause to try to save the city (I think that’s the point designer Dave is making), that you’d be so overwhelmed that killing villagers would only bolster the undead forces quicker And yeah abominations are sewn together
Hmm 🤔. He said that every indication is that killing the villages will accomplish nothing. I assumed the way that the civilians would be… culled, would stop them from turning. Eg. Decapitation and burned, judging from all the fire. Do I think Arthas culled the city to combat egos with Mal’Ganis. No, I think that’s more of the mission design. I think he did it to contain the (soon to be) undead outbreak. I think it’s an unbelievably hard choice; and I think he stopped the undead from spilling into Lordaeron much faster. I don’t think you could do it and stay sane though. I think it broke him. He was already going a bit crazy lol.
@@KMBPapaRevenant from reading the comments on DesignerDave’s video my understanding is that yes, at the very least burning would do the trick - but the only reason we see that being done is that once arthas was corrupted (or psychologically damaged enough) the undead left, because getting at arthas was the real goal. You’re absolutely right about the level design, in fact the only reason I made this video is because I made a video on that very point you brought up but in that video I assumed we were all on the same page with arthas in the culling mission but saw arthas turn evil after. And I got a whole bunch of people saying arthas did nothing wrong which led to this video And again, you’re right. This mission has no ideal outcome. The point I’m guessing we probably differ on is what the best of the choices he had available to him. I think there were probably ways to deal with stratholme that would have been better but I also think that abandoning the city might have been the best move, and that probably would have been mentally traumatizing to Arthas as well
well pandaren were an easter egg at one time...But seriously there is possibly an argument for the scourge being a little bit more autonomous at this early stage before the Lich King had become very powerful and the cult of the damned was only a minor presence. Sylvanas broke off Arthas' control quite quickly (yes Arthas was weakened at that point but the LK was also weakened) and this is much later that Statholme. That said no one wants to become scourge according to Forsaken, so it is definitely a mercy to kill people before they turn.
5:11 purging the city changes a lot. After malganis ran away, the soldiers of lorderon collected the corpses and burned them so the acolytes couldnt retrive them and make them into abominations.
Soldiers of Lordaeron didn't collect the corpses and burned them, it was the people of Stratholme who survived the culling because Arthas wasn't very thorough.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel idk maybe it was a reforged thing where jaina was walking into stratholme as medivh comes to her and talkes about leading her people to kalimdor while there where burning piles of corpses in the background next to ruins of houses.
5:10 That's actually an interesting way of looking at it. Since we have cutscene in the end of that mission, where surviving humans burn their dead, i thought it actually made the difference, while Dave states that in the end those corpses too, will fuel the Scourge. I'm not sure how these two points correlate.
The prophet does come along and say "the dead in this land may lie still for the time being, but don't be fooled, your young prince will find only death in the cold north", so it's probably alluding to that.
Well, that's why Dave is a level designer and not a writer. Even if they had been alive, by the time the Scourge arrived to destroy the entire kingdom, they would all become undead, sooner or later. If anything, Arthas' assault caused more of them to be burned than they would be, otherwise.
Sorry, I think you and even the creator are wrong about the culling. Arthas purges stratholme and *prevents it from becoming an undead stronghold*. "The culling of stratholme does nothing!" Yes it did! What on earth are you talking about? Stratholme doesn't fall to the scourge until after the return of Arthas as a Death Knight and with him the reactivation of the scourge and the cult of the damned...
Yeah but you just proved my point didn’t you? Stratholme does fall, it just takes a little longer. It was a trap, there was no winning. The only reason the undead left in the first place was because they corrupted Arthas (or got under his skin to the point he was willing to chase Mal’Ganis to Northrend). Once they achieved that they didn’t need to conquer Stratholme right away so they left. They probably would have annihilated stratholme then and there if Arthas hadn’t intervened - so in that sense yeah he saved the city but he had started down the path that led to its destruction anyway, so there was no winning no matter what choice he made
Arthas purged Stratholme, but he didn't even kill all of the people who lived there. He didn't burn any bodies, he didn't do anything but kill innocent people - some of whom were no doubt already infected, but far from all were, and got goaded into chasing Mal'ganis to Northrend.
@@AlexBarrGameDev I don't think we can use the actual outcomes of events to justify the morality of the decisions made. Arthas isn't clairvoyant and can't be expected to know the eventual fate of Straholme. He does however have a wealth of information that indicates that if he does nothing all of Stratholme will almost certainly be converted into undead ghouls and rounded up by Mal'Ganis providing him a large increase in his forces to aid him in destroying the planet. I don't think his decision here is the best, I agree that he probably could have confronted the threat and retained his allies. I don't however think his decision here is evil either, you've mentioned before you feel the culling is immoral because it violates the free will of those people culled but that disregards the likely countless more people who will be unwillingly killed by the thousands of ghouls either swarming across the landscape or following Mal'Ganis. Ultimately Arthas appears to view the entire situation of a trolley problem, where he can switch the tracks to kill the comparatively fewer people in Straholme than will die in the runaway disaster that otherwise occurs. Personally I feel the reason Arthas is an immoral tragic hero is because he pushes away all of his peers (friends, mentors, family & love interest alike) and is driven to take up a cursed relic that hastens and continues a path he was seemingly already on.
@@cameronbreeze4029 I absolutely agree with your final reasoning there, I too think that his immortality is essentially centred around his relationships. But that’s one of the reasons why I think the way he handled stratholme is immoral - because yeah it is essentially a trolley problem, and had other things been handled differently I could very easily find myself saying that he did the right thing, but he significantly handicapped himself by pushing away uther and jaina and like the person that commented before you said he didn’t even finish culling the city, something I hadn’t even considered. He is in a race to get to 100 citizens culled with Mal’Ganis but once that amount is reached he just leaves and follow Mal’Ganis. All his decisions seem to be split decisions based on anger without properly thinking things through.
@@AlexBarrGameDev I think you're interpreting the objective a bit too literally there, sure he leaves before the burning is done but I think the idea that he kills x number of citizens then declares victory and gallops off is a bit too absurd to take as literal. I figure he finishes his purge without letting Mal'Ganis gain too many followers and moves. I'll also say I do feel quite strongly they had to enter the city based on the information they had but I 100% agree that he does the worst version of that and basically doesn't even try to get a better outcome. Thanks for the response, I appreciate the time and thought you've put into the topic and it was a fun video.
The culling broke Uther tbh, not Arthas, more as a character than as a person (he just show he hypocrisy incarnated, pretty good representation of a church man) The culling was necessary, Uther knew it and this is why he didnt even try to stop it, he was OK with the killing of innocents as long as he wasnt the one with blood on his hand Obv this also broke Arthas but imo if Uther wouldnt have ""betrayed"" him, arthas would have not fall
No it wasn't. Firstly look at the end result. No one was actually saved. An entire city burned, Arthas became corrupt, and destroyed the entire kingdom. That's the results of stratholme. Arthas could've tried other things, he could've tried to quarantine to find a cure with dalaran. And even if it was doomed, the simple act of trying something but a violent solution would've altered his path. Because he wouldn't have been in a position for the dreadlord to trick. And would've had enough good friends and support to know better than to chase him anyways. Which would've likely saved a lot of lives. Arthas HAD choices. He simply chose the worst ones.
@@MikePhantom It did, until the scourge arrived. WoW literally has lore about when it was attacked, meaning it survived thanks to Arthas and could put up a fight against the Scourge, even if it was pointless.
Yeah doubt Uther wanted the culling to happen, If it was up to him he would have tried saving Stratholme. He would fail, possibly even dying and condemning Lordaeron sooner, but he would try, he was that kind of paladin according to lore. The "church man" archetype you are describing didn't really exist in the warcraft lore untill the Scarlet crusade I believe.
"He was never trying to do the wrong thing" Just because he wan't trying to, (Which he absolutely was at certain points in the story, you know, the whole hiring a bunch of mercenaries to defy his father's orders to go back to Lorderon, only to then betray and kill them once their job was done.) doesn't mean HE DIDN'T do anything wrong. Because he did, and we see him doing things wrong even BEFORE he so much as touches Frostmourne.
I present a line from Dr. Allen Grant, in Jurassic Park 3: "some of the worst things IMAGINABLE we're done with the best intentions". ZUKO is someone who truly was a character worth defending, even regardless of the bad things he did. Part of the reason is because he HIMSELF eventually saw that he was doing bad things in service to a bad person, and he actively chose to not give in to becoming the person who tried to force him to be that kind of person. Arthas, regardless of his intentions, lost sight of what was right in his anger and hatred of Mal'Ganis. Acts based in hatred are inherently hateful and wrong, as evidenced by the light abandoning him. That was the whole reason his desire to find Frostmourne was even solidified. He could no longer call upon the lights power, and without it he didn't believe he was strong enough to kill Mal'Ganis
Just one thing. That totally sort of ruins the argument in this case. Yes, they could’ve been raised into abominations and other foul beings. But, how about we just burn the bodies? Which isn’t that what he did anyway? then the necromancer’s wouldn’t have anything to work with except ashes.
I've had quite a discussion with Dave on this topic. Despite my respect for the man, I can't say I loved that. I still consider that the different interpretations should be allowed, because the game is really scarce on details. The dialogues and cutscenes omit a lot of what would really be said and done in reality. Take Arthas' dialogue with Uther just before Stratholme: he didn't give Uther any arguments, and the whole discussion considering Culling is just 3 sentences or so. Dave confirms that it's meant to be a characterization of Arthas. But every dialogue in the game is like that, they are always extremely brief, and people just understand everything from very brief explanations. How can we possibly know where it's characterization and where it's omission? We can't. And when events happen in the game, it's impossible to know which part of what's shown on the screen is canon and which is just game mechanics. For example, during the culling we see that people are basically turning into zombies before Arthas' very eyes. Moreover, we never see him killing any uninfected person. I know that is not canon, because I spoke to Dave. But that's what happens in the game, and if those actions are to be judged immoral, then every protagonist of a zombie apocalypse story is a terrible person. Moreover, we see surviving villagers burning zombie corpses in the following cutscene, which might mean either him doing a bad job culling, or sparing the uninfected people. Again, the canon is that Arthas did a bad job culling, and the plague didn't activate because Mal'Ganis wasn't there. But it's never stated in the game. It might as well mean he evacuated all the people who weren't infected. Did Arthas commit evil actions? Sure. The mercenary episode is very clear about that. Not the Culling, though.
What Dave said also didn't really make any sense. Like, the culling 100% worked. If you didn't kill the civilian, they turned into zombies within literal seconds and then joined the evil horde in forcefully infecting others. And dead bodies become abominations? On their own? Just like that? Where is he getting this from? There is literally nothing in the lore which supports this. Abominations have to be literally stitched together, that's why they look like that! And skeletons have to be raised by necromancers. Unlike the infected zombies, they don't create themselves on their own. Nor do we see this happening in the mission or afterwards. And when Arthas is done, the Dreadlord literally retreats, defeated and the city survives, even with so many dead. If Arthas hadn't intervened, there is a good chance that the Dreadlord and his army of already infected villagers would have gone on to kill everyone. If anything, Uthor and Jaina did the worst thing in this situation: they literally just... left! Leaving the city to its own devices. They didn't stick around. Or at least tried to keep the Dreadlord from infecting more people. They just went away! None of what DesignerDave says matches with how the mission works out. I feel like DesignerDave just realized that he had created a situation where killing innocent people was the only option and tried to wriggle out of that moral complexity with completely nonsensical mental gymnastics.
"Some may question your right to destroy ten billion people (read Stratholme). Those who understand know that you have no right to let them live." - Exterminatus Extremis
I could chalk Stratholme up as one of those tough decision leaders have to make. However, it is clear that Arthas has gone off the rails by the time he reaches Northrend. Arthas had good intentions, but that doesn't mean you are good person. Once he was willing to compromise all his principles to accomplish his goals, he had no principles. It is a classic case of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
i completely disagree on he was "tricked" into picking up frostmorne narrative both in-game warcraft 3 Muradin and The Guardian actually warned him that blade was cursed and evil. Arthas completely ignored their warnings and took the blade anyway because of his desire for revenge on Mal'ganis and damn all the consequences. nobody forced him or gave him misdirected info on picking the blade. Ner'zhul has ability to foresee the future events and told Mal'gains Arthas would in fact chooses to take frostmorne and sacrifice Muradin.
The biggest issue with Arthas was: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. There were no good choices for him to make. All roads went to tragedy. One must also remember, Arthas was the first soul Frostmourne claimed. He was the first victim. The Arthas, wielder of the blade, was NOT the same Arthas prior. But even as the Lich King, Arthas did show the restraint of his former self. Had he not, the second Scourge invasion would NOT have been stopped. It HAS to remembered that Arthas became corrupted by the darkness of Death itself. There really was no coming back from that. It's like Sylvanas, she became something different. With the power Arthas, as the Lich King, possessed, he could have easily regained dominance of the Forsaken as well. How could he not, is the true question. Arthas unquestionably and easily defeated (and would've killed the cowardly) Illidan even as Arthas' powerful was drastically waning as a DeathKnight. I will not absolve Arthas of his foolishness but he wasn't a completely bad guy. He was misguided and inexperienced. He made terrible decisions but he wasn't purely evil. He had a heart. Even a counter-part of himself aids you in trying to defeat him. Even Uther (before shit retcon) forgave him and chose to remember him as the hero he was once. Let us also not forget. Arthas won the Raid battle. We, the champions, lost. If it weren't for the Holy Light itself surging through a great Paladin, the Lich King would have won it all. The only time in the entire game of WoW where the End-Game Raid Boss was actually too powerful to defeat. The strongest entity to ever grace our worlds. Arthas did indeed do some things wrong; I can't deny. One also must remember that the 'road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. One must act with reason and logic, not emotion. You can blame Arthas for his decisions pre-Frostmourne. After Frostmourne, Arthas became something else and it's a LOT harder say one way or another on anything. Lastly, another thing to not be forgotten, is that the Dreadlords are able to do some nasty things when it comes to mind/heart manipulation. If we take into account what a Dreadlord is capable of doing to a human, it may be harder to blame Arthas for his pre-Frostmourne decisions. Mal'Ganis could've done a lot. Arthas is probably a good example of the rare occasion of a 'good' person doing bad things. Usually it's just bad people doing bad things, or that's at least how I've come to see life. There's a bit more nuance to what I'm trying to say there but I don't know a better way to say it. Kind of like when socialists murder dissidents, deep down, they know they're the bad guys. All in all... I don't care, I love Arthas and I'm team Scourge! Kill the living, raise the dead!
Honestly that ending for a raid-boss was a highlight of WoW the only time when Death won but just in a split second loses, no real raid bosses ever went to that extent again where evil won unless some holy power acts to save the moment. N'Zoth? we snap out of our mind control and Kamehameha him to death, Jailer becoming whole again? well we were too busy fighting sylvanas to really care what he was doing the entire time. Warlords we fight Archimonde... again?
I'm an Rp'er on World of Warcraft... and I once considered creating a character that was apart of the Culling proper. Part of that process was coming up with justifications for why someone would go along with this, despite how morally wrong slaughtering innocent people normally is. It helps if you consider the wider problems that the Scourge outbreak had inflicted on the Kingdom, even before one gets to Stratholme. Lordaeron was not in a good position going forward. The Cult of the Damned was largely made up of serfs and farmers from the 'Breadbasket' of the kingdom and the Scourge largely built up its numbers for the original army that Arthas and Co defeated before they reached Stratholme by wiping out those same farming communities, alongside using Andorhal (which was at the center of the food production and distribution) to infect larger settlements that might have been able to endure actual attacks. The Scourge also blighted a great deal of these farmlands in the process; Maybe not to the extent that the Plaguelands would become known by, but still pretty bad. On top of this, existing grain stockpiles are going to have to be inspected and chunks destroyed because of it being a primary method of spreading the plague. No matter what happened, famine and (more mundane) plagues were going to ran rampant across Lorderan in the aftermath of this. Both of which bring additional death. If Stratholme was allowed to become a Scourge bastion with a brand new army of undead in the midst of this, marching fresh forces across ravaged and blighted parts of the kingdom later is going to be a logistical nightmare at best, provided that what few settlements that have survived up to this point continue to do so. This is a problem, because with Lordaeron about to enter a weakened state due to the aforementioned famine (and all the nasty stuff that comes with famine), with the Scourge actively putting continued pressure from a stronghold that can't be easily assaulted by the living due to its defenses and the blight against the land itself that makes resupply or living off the land next to impossible... It would be a war of attrition that favored the Scourge heavily. Purging Stratholme and preventing that bastion and army from forming was pretty much the only real chance Lordaeron had of surviving long enough to recover. Yes, the remaining pockets of Scourge and Cult of the Damned necromancers would need to be hunted down, but by comparison that's just hunting down stragglers. As tragic as it was, there wasn't a lot in the way of alternative options to dealing with the situation in Stratholme before the plague and the Scourge made even assaulting the place more of a horrific nightmare then it turned out to be. Despite Arthas' personal flaws, this was simply a shitty situation were doing nothing wasn't an option.
That's the thing because Arthas culled the city, while he was gone for several months in notherend before and after Mal'Ganis the undead crisis was no more in Lordaeron it wasn't until arthas came back with the scourge in tow did lordaeron fall. Had he done nothing and planned it out with his father, the nobles, the advisors, gave them the story and found some way to prove his claim of what was going on potentially wasting several weeks to prove this, stratholme would have already been lost. Arthas would then go after Mal'Ganis in northerend while lordaeron fell to the undead army of stratholme.
@@Darkness5423 There is an argument to be made that Arthas' decisions weren't wrong... it was just the manner in which he went about trying to implement them. Taking the time to properly explain the nature of the plague to Uther and the Knights of the Silver Hand present might not have gotten them on his side, but it would at least have given them the context of why he was considering the Cull. "As a Paladin, slaying the population of this city before the plague can take them is abhorrent. As Prince of the kingdom, I have to act in the best interests of the Kingdom at large."
Despite my love for WotLK, it retcon-ed some things that's related to Arthas and Lich King merge into one being and everything that comes afterwards. But the subsequent literature retcon-ed everything into oblivion, making Arthas the only personality of Lich-King, playing into that questline about LK carving out his heart and throwing it away. Why i say "recon-ed into oblivion"? There's multiple clear indications that the Lich King is a merge between two entities. Arthas' personality plays into want to remove everything that reminds him of his own human beginning, such as all living things and his heart - something that actually hurt him after the heart was destroyed by Fordring. Something that Ner'zhul would never do. While Ner'zhul's part of the deal clearly shows by torturing Bolvar and placing him at the top of Frozen Throne - not just for the hell of it, but to keep a *replacement* close to the source in case things went south. And there was enough reasons to assume that since Arthas' side already cost both of them - being hit by Forsaken's plague, loosing Knights of Ebon Blade, getting weakened by destruction of his heart to Ashbringer. Another example, from his dialogues it's clear that he's both Ner'zhul and Arthas at the same time. "I was the shaman once" is the direct quote - something that Arthas would never said. Unfortunately, whatever the plans were for this storyline, it died after the Legion, where absolute morons took to the writing of this.
It's a shame, unfortunately bad writing seems to have become a trend the last few years. I never played past burning legion to be honest. I find Arthas's story fascinating, especially the merger with Ner'zhul - I figured that was the case while doing research for this video which is why I said I thought there seemed to be more of a difference between Death Knight Arthas and the Lich King then the difference between Arthas the paladin and Death Knight Arthas
@@AlexBarrGameDev I've played up to the legion and early BFA before Blizzard shit the bed hard with "it's a pvp expansion, but the first endboss of the first raid gonna be poor man's copy of Lady Vashj". The quality between Legion's writing and everything that follows is honesly unbelievable. And the Legion wasn't that good writing-wise - but it played into what was established - for example, Bolvar clearly stating that Ebon Blade is owned by him, and he will use you in the way he sees fit. And and the same time Legion established Light as being not-so-friendly, Eonar as potentially being malevolent, and the vision that Sargeras in his madness saw about Dark Titan being born from the Old-Gods-Infested planet might POTENTIALLY be true. Seeing how we just pwned Nzoth - not the still bound C'thun, not the barely starting to get freed Yogg-Saron, but FULLY FREED N'ZOTH I just can't take this shit even remotely serious anymore. Not even gonna talk in-depth about how they turned Sylvanas into shit-eating Marry Sue.
I haven't done ICC, so I don't know if Arthas bad guy monologues about how the crusade to Northrend was part of his master plan or something, but this idea that Arthas was "holding back" seems ridiculous to me. The Pre-Patch event in WOW was a Scourge invasion of Azeroth using plagued grain again, as well as a formal invasion of parts of the world. Sending Naxxrammas to Northrend was a retreat of sorts from the EPL and it's crazy to think that Arthas would sacrifice Kel'Thuzad to test people. In fact in Naxx he outright calls for the PC's to be destroyed. Heck outside of Ice Crown and arguably Zul'Drek, you get the feeling like the Scourge are on the defensive, at best mounting counter-attacks. By WOTLK, Arthas' power is waning, largely because the Alliance and Horde recovered, built up and had a new generation of champions take the place of old ones like Uther. His outposts in the Plaguelands were under constant assault by them as well as the Scarlet Crusade, and the Pre-Patch event was him attempting to regain some of that power.
he does monologue about his plan being to draw the best fighters to Northrend and trial them out before killing them and raising as his personal army - and he *does* succeed in killing us, but Tirion unlocks the anti-CC trait of the Ashbringer and shatters Frostmourne before he could raise us, and the ghost of Terenas II ressurrects us
"Yeah, so just because you could end the world and decide not to doesn't exactly make you a good person" I was gonna rebut this but then I thought of the politicians with their nukes and I wouldn't describe them as good people just because they're not launching them either
The Culling damaged Arthas mind and soul, but no; It was NOT his first act of evil, and it was NOT a wrong decision. When he got into the city, those people were already damned to become undead, and with Mal'ganis in the vicinity (and his necromancers), those undead would be controlled and would become a huge problem to the entire continent, and the undead plague would've overrun the continent. "Ahh but Timmy!" - Ok, first, Timmy might either be a joke, and even if he is lore serious, Timmy is found without no necromancer around, dreadlord or any other greater undead controller, hence why he is friendly (more like neutral, since you cant use him). And we have FACTUAL PROOF that the events of The Culling are different, since any citizen that mal'ganis get to it first, becomes an ENEMY undead. "But even killing them, they would have become undead either!" - Yeah, WEAKER undead, far far weaker. A ghoul can shred a normal soldier with ease while a skeleton can be dealt with less casualties. ...the nuremberg trials, really? Moving on! The real first TRUE EVIL act of Arthas was when he burned his ships and killed the mercenaries. That was evil, and that was unnecessary. What do you think would it happen if The Culling had not happened?!! You don't need to go out of Warcraft to find comparisons to Arthas path, as one thing most people forget about W3, is that it's a triple protagonists story, where each race (orcs, men and elves) have one "Arthas" and one "Uther". And although in the case of the orcs, the story lacks nuance (that eventually got overloaded with it in WoW), if you look at the elves you gonna see a perfect mirror of Arthas in the character of Illidan. And they are mirrored on purpose, to show that "in extreme situations, you may need to do extreme things" and at the same time that "extremism is always the worst option" Both Arthas and Illidan sacrificed a small fraction of their people to save their entire world, and got chastised by it, both sacrificed a part of themselves in what they thought it was the way to save themselves, both were lied to, both were manipulated by a higher being that twisted their mind. Not only that, both are brazen, somewhat reckless warrior princes that, for different reasons, got to the same "only I am in a position to do what must be done" mentality. But even though their paths were the same, step by step, whenever Arthas pushed to do greater acts in the name of good, he FAILED, he was wrong, where, whenever Illidan did the same thing, he succeeded. And even though Illidan got his second chance and became an universe level saviour, I would argue that he was far evil in his journey than Arthas (pre-Frostmourne). Up to the point where Arthas picked the cursed blade, he never did anything with the thought of glory he would gain by being his people's saviour, where Illidan was doing this at least 50% for the glory (and maybe a chance to impress Tyrande). So in conclusion, I AGREE with the part that Arthas did A LOT of wrong things, BUT not everything he did was wrong. And I also DISAGREE with the idea that his entire W3 journey was of an evil psychopathic man. Arthas WAS a good man, that did horrible things, THEN did EVIL things along the way, picked the top5 most cursed items in the universe and became completely deranged because of it (there's a small retcon on WoW that points to the idea that from the moment he picked the sword he had no control over his actions anymore, but this is not here or there, we all can agree that DEATHKNIGHT ARTHAS is evil, regardless of how much, by a little or entirely, the sword is controlling him).
The way I see it though, is even if Arthas is justified 100% in going into Stratholme and culling the citizens, its still the path that led to his destruction (of course, he can't know that ahead of time, granted) where as had he done anything else he wouldn't have been tempted by Mal'Ganis to go to Northrend. Sure, by abandoning the city, the undead forces would be bolstered by a HUGE degree and that would be a serious challenge, but I would argue that that challenge would be easier to manage than the scourge led by Death Knight Arthas. And as for the psychopath Arthas in WarCraft 3, I hope you're right, BUT if you look back at the game and picture yourself in 2002, there is no WoW, there are no books, you are playing the game for the first time. If all you have to go on is the WarCraft 3 campaign alone, then based on his behaviour, things aren't looking good for him. Some people argue that he was just a poorly written character that was fleshed out over time and became a much better character after the expansion, WoW and books.
At the end of Shadowlands I think the perfect ending would have been Anduin dropping a small soulstone quest item and it leads up to a area in the Shadowlands. When we get there the pure part of Arthas manifests and Invincible appears, he pets him and mounts him walking off into the distance and their remaining anima dissipates and they fade away.
Or they go balls deep and show that any humanity arthas shown was all a lie, and he was secretly always a monster. And that anyone who simped for him was tricked >:)
honestly during the cutscene with anduine, his father, and the orc (i forget his name) when their all holding Kingsmourne it would have been more badass to see arthas also reaching out to break it so he could finally be free of his torment while saying "you don't deserve the same fate i had..." before Kingsmourne shatters into his dads swords. It could have also had anduine having an internal talk with his father, while the soul of Arthas got to finally have the closure with Jaina before disappearing. It just having sylvanas say "no one will remember your name ever." before whisking his soul away was very anti-climatic.
10:12 The thing is, Anakin as a Jedi has been trained to control his emotion. We see other Jedi not giving into their anger. It was Anakin's failing for not living up to his lessions, and ultimately this made him voulnareable to Palpatines manipulation. Also he was blinded by greed, manifesting as his SELFISH love for Padmé, and other thing Palpatine could exploit. He wanted to save her not for Padmé's sake, but only for himself. On the other hand Luke's SELFLESS love managed to save his father and destroy the Sith because he was willing to sacrifice himself. Luke, opposed to Anakin learned to let go. Edit: I accidentally said Luke was selfish, which he isn't by the time he saves his father.
Imagine you wake up, you couldnt take breakfast from that new sweet grain that shipped into the town, and arthas comes and kill you with out really knowing what is going on.
Now imagine Arthas doesn't kill you. You go about your day not knowing a thing and suddenly oops your loved ones or neighbors that did eat that breakfast are man eating zombies who eat your flesh. None of these sound good. The difference is in the second scenario you and your loved ones dont just die you also become mindless puppets that will kill countless others. Must suck being a citizen of Lordaeron during Menethil times
After your family and neighbours would turn into zombies, they would have killed you anyway and turn you into a zombie as well. You were already dead and Arthas just saved your soul from suffering.
@@rafairacki9302 Did he though? Because I don't think "saving" and "brutally murdering after breaking and entering" are the same thing. I am not a lawyer, but if you tell the judge you broke into a man's house and clubbed him and his entire family to death to save them from being the undead, I suspect he will not be letting you go that day....Or anyday ever. Because it's still a brutal home invasion and murder.
@@NeiasaurusCreations Yes, let's apply modern laws and regulations to fantasy world where zombies exist :) 1. Majority of people in the city ate the grain and would turn into zombies. 2. After turning into zombies, they would kill the remaining survivors and turn them into zombies too. 3. Then they would spread outside of the city and turn the nearby villages etc. 3. Souls exist in Warcraft universe and it is said that they suffer while people are raised as undead. He killed the people that would have been turned/killed by zombies to save their souls from suffering and to slow down/stop the spread of the plague. Actually I would say that him "brutally murdering" people with weapons is a better way to die than to be eaten alive by zombies :)
@@rafairacki9302 You missed what I was saying. The real world laws are based off morals, morals we as a society have collectively upheld. Murder is not bad because it's illegal, you window licker. It's bad because the immorality of ending a person's life, taking their future away, and depriving their family of them, among other things. 1) Doesn't justify murder. Nor will murder improve the situation...It makes it drastically worse actually given we know what happens. 2) You \think\ that's what's going to happen. But what you or arthas think is also NOT justification for murder. A person that might grow up to be a serial killer simply can't be killed as a child as a precaution for their potential behavior later. The same applies here. Just because some might turn, and others might die from it, doesn't really justify killing EVERYONE without ANY discretion or attempt to figure whos infected or not. 3)Again, I refer to 2. Not that this point matters, since the plague spreads ANYWAYS even with the purging and Arthas ends up destroying the entire kingdom. And this event is the event that leads down that path, so is ultimately the event that causes way more deaths than anything. 4) He didn't do a very good job at saving anyone's soul. Given he become the lich king, dooms an entire kingdom, and spreads misery until he's finally put down in ICC. F for effort sport. Simply put not only was Arthas' actions completely immoral, but also completely ineffective and the stupidest possible solution. It was an emotional choice made in the moment that would have MASSIVE negative consequence for the entire world. There is nothing 'good' or 'right' about his choice. The game literally makes this clear. That this was the moment he crossed the line and started his descent to villiany. And he made it all on his own, without being tricked or mind controlled. And it's one of the worst choices he makes. Showing that he was always the DK arthas deep down. The sword and LK just brought it out and nurtured what was always there. He's not so tragic in my eyes. Good intentions often make evil people.
Arthas is trained mostly to be an effective warrior (and he had the warrior mindset of wreck things first then ask later), so much he forgot that there are other ways to deal the undead problem in Lordaeron. For example, abandoning Lordaeron altogether. Might not be a good thing, but as Medivh predicted, the land was already lost even in the Scourge's earlier stages. Another option might be to ask Kirin Tor to mass-produce an antidote, or to ask the High Elves to do the same (or even have both the Kirin Tor and the High Elves do it together). Arthas forgets that as a prince, his number one job is to be skilled at asking people for help, and that war isn't the only thing that has to be in his mind.
Timmy undead having free will ?Just because he was made a neutral creep. Maybe designers felt is unfit to change kids into raging monsters at that point ? Or maybe he just needed "guidance" from KT or a Dread Lord, they are created via domination magic, so they need a dominating mind. I think it is a huge difference between undead ghouls lets say and risen skeletons. If it wasn't any, why bother create the plague to turn them into undead in the first place ? you just needed them dead to raise, right ? Seeking for possible explanation while disregarding more obvious one is not building a strong case. Lack of reasoning. Again, same simple yet wrong explaining. Why not judge all other characters at same time for doing nothing at all. Even Arthas's father takes the plague as a joke, a rumor. It is clearly shown in the cinematic at the start of the game. Since his father gives the direct orders, first to Uther, then when he recalls Northrend troops, yes, Arthas is indeed alone fighting in something nobody takes interest or understanding. Was he played ? Yes. Was the "mastermind" Mal'Ganis also played ? Yes, he was. Was he responsible for choosing as he did ? Yes. Yet, as the story was build, he had all circumstances from both side, from Mal'Ganis actions and from humans inaction. Having self-control as death knight and how much of it is an assumption. Another bad bad story reading before making the video. The sword and the helm are NOT Legion artifacts. It is clearly revealed in Shadowlands, from what we know The Jailor might have been using LK for his own interest, using the Legion when he wanted, keeping it away when he didn't. You don't have to be sure of anything, again, even Uther's story is detailed in Shadowlands. Arthas' soul was first to be probably split. How exactly is not clearly stated. Also you can see with Bolvar, the new LK, that he clearly states that a huge effort was necessary to keep Jailor's influence on him apart. Regarding why he didn't turn all world into undead, that is also explained in ICC storyline. Risen undead are just mindless, skill-less bodies. In order to fight the legion he needed the most powerful heroes turned into undead, to retain their power and augment it. If you can't follow the story properly, please don't do videos on it, is.....useless effort....that could be better invested elsewhere.
WHOA WHOA WHOA DUDE your COMPLETELY wrong about the culling. it IS needed because if Arthas did not purge the city your looking at an instant army of literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE at minimum according to the lore its the LARGEST CITY in their Kingdom. The size in game? miniturized beyond all belief. Even in WoW its pathetically tiny compared to the properly sized version and its still two complete dungeons. PLUS they leave out large chunks of it including the Harbor. There is a reason why the Scarlet Crusade was never able to clear it out despite multiple attempts. If Arthas had not slaughtered EVERY LIVING BEING in the city Lordaeron the kingdom would have been wiped out within the month. It was a win win scenario for the demons that took MONTHS of planning. Either Arthas wipes out the city or the newly turned undead wipe out the kingdom. Plus BEFORE you go into 'oh but necros can still just raise them from the corpses' THAT TAKES A TON OF TIME. Like for actually durable and useful undead that last more than a few minutes it takes an EXPERIENCED necromancer at least several seconds to animate them PER CORPSE. Thats at MINIMUM for a 200k pop city which is the lowest it could be with stated pop numbers is .6 DAYS of constant continues work on the part of 20 EXPERIENCED necromancers and thats if they work uninterrupted and the bodies are not burnt in fires like they did in cannon. PLUS those experienced Necromancers are at an EXTREME premium after Arthas and Uthers knights just SLAUGHTERED Kel'thuzad and most of his cult at least their higher up members in the previous missions. So no dude Arthas made the only correct choice that he had availible with the information he had on him. Also you not knowing if the undead have free will? Thats tells me you NEVER played the Frozen throne and know NOTHING about its campaign. Also based on your previous video and your hatred of 'evil' campaigns you likely also never played the undead campaign or the other campaigns for that matter. If so then you never learned that the undead had 0 free will up until the Lich King started getting attacked by Illidean allowing some undead to go free creating the Forsaken. Yes he became evil later on but right up until he took up Frostmourne he was STILL more good than evil and would have been horrified if he knew of his future actions that his path would lead him to. Ultimatelly He was a good man that constantly was forced to choose between the lesser of two evils unable to turn from his path or realize that this was a game that he cant win by playing it and the best decision he had availible was not to play. He was in his early twenties too and taught his SOLE purpose for being alive was to defend and protect his people his entire life. Like that is his primairy duty as both a prince and a paladin. So ya he lacked the wisdom to see that the path offered to him by Medhiv was the only path where he COULD save at least some of his people but given how he was raised and his youth there was 0 chance of him accepting such as an option especially from a seemingly crazy person. Maybe if he had a bit more experience sure but your talking about someone who was HAND SELECTED for this by every demon AND Nerzul for being the perfect choice to corrupt given his youth idealism and relative inexperience combining into the whole the path to hell is paved with good intentions and Arthas had the best of intentions and even made the correct choices the entire way through. the ONLY way he could have maybe been turned aside is if one of his friends stayed loyal and put up the option to cross the sea after Stratholme like say Jaina who actually does it later on. Part of why killing the city hurt him so much is that both his mentor and the woman he loved turned their backs on him completely WHILE he was making the correct choice.
agreed, like i said in other posts, if they took their time, analyzed the situation quarantined off the two entrances they controlled, while Mal'Ganis controlled all the other entrances. Mal'Ganis would have a field day in stratholme while arthas and pals are requesting/waiting for assistance from his father and the other nobles. Even if they waited a day or two and the king/nobles actually believed them and a day later sent their army. Dreadlords don't need sleep, you know how much damage/conversions Mal'Ganis could get done in 48, 72, or even 96 hours before the alliance finally came to stop him? By this point the army would arrive and it wouldn't be to rescue/save villagers it'd be to try and halt the massive undead army coming from a walled off undead bastion.
So. Arthas bad because Arthas burn city only to later turn bad and come back and undead the city. How the hell is he supposed to know that? Oh, yeah, he also murdered an entire city. Well, you can either murder an entire city and burn it's inhabitants' corpses or you can fuel the Scourge so it goes on with a new avalanche of zombies, killing and plaguing more people as they go, by the way, zombies suffer much more as zombies than when their bodies are burnt, Arthas ain't burning them alive or skinning people to boil them later
I saw another video that made a great point about Arthas in Quel'thalas. All he did to Sylvanas was personal. The objective of the lich king is to simply raise more undead. There was no need to, after killing and raising Sylvanas, to keep her self awareness, and torment her for an entire year. The lich king has no need for that. His genocide is dispassionate. He has no reason to just torment a person, and keep her body in an iron coffin to further torture her. That was personal. That was all Arthas. And the fact he kept her blood alongside all the trinkets of the people he hurt and betrayed is disturbing. It's like a serial killer keeping mementos of his victims. Arthas isn't redeemable. He is a monster
If you forget about morality (a subjective concept fabricated by us that changes as times goes), and think about the practical side of things. Had he succeeded in the culling of Stratholme, doesn't matter whatever judgment fell upon him, by men or divine, the end result would be that the Scourge wouldn't have continued to kill hundreds of thousands more people. And these people that were killed later, if you ask them, "would you kill some folks at Stratholme now to save your life later?", I'm sure most would say yes, like all those moral paradoxes scenarios we put together. So much for morality 😄
Good point, but from a practicality standpoint there was never winning in stratholme, it was a trap. And yeah from a moral standpoint there is no winning for Arthas either, he's either a monster for culling the city, or a monster for abandoning it
Arthas did nothing wrong. What happens after he loses his mind due to Frostmourne has no relevance here. At the culling of Stratholme he did what only a king thinking about his country could've done while Jaina and Uther could only condemn him when they themselves were of no use in this situation.
@@zagorim7469 Asking for a suggestion from a guy who lacked understanding towards the Plague would take too much time. Jaina didn't even propose a single idea despite her understanding of the Plague, meaning, even she should've accepted that it was the choice to make. She just lacked the willingness to do it. What they lacked at that point was time because, a few moments later, the Plague was already kicking and Malganis already arrived.
Arthas did do nothing wrong, the only choise he can be judge on was the culling, when he was in his 20s. In a mediaval fantasy world where science barely exists the cures of illnesses comes down to the light, healers from all realms use it to heal people, arthas tried to heal people with the plague in a village where he killed kelthuzad, and he failed he saw that the light could not cure the plague ( in wow we players find out that there is no cure for the plague its unstopable) So arthas upon reaching strathholme makes a choise, kill everyone inside, there is no way to see whos infected or not, and yes inocent people died. But what choise did he have, okey seal the city and let everyone there be transformed and die and then only after kill them?? or let people out and 100% the plague would spread, he did the only option he really had. And then comes nothrend where yes THERE he makes a bad choise he takes the blade even after muradin tells him no. Thats the only wrong choise he made, and as soon as he touched the blade he died....YES many people skip the cutscene in warcraft 3 where the dreadlord tells arthas " that balde takes the soul of everything it touchs, your soul was the first one it consumed" Arthas died when he grabbed the blade thats why when he kills his father and land he feels nothing, not happyness nor sadness nothing at all. So thats the only wrong choise that ARTHAS the prince the young man does. The culling was not even a choise, because if you read the novels and comics taht are canon arthas asks the light for help in the culling and the light leavs him, she does not help him, the light in wow only helps you if you believe in what you are doing, example the scarlet crusade can use the light to kill everyone. The light makes no choises of good and evil it has no morals, if you believe 100% in soemthign it helps you, arthas didnt think it was the right choise, he didnt want to do it but he "had to" there was no option. Lets take real life as an example, altho its a game we can do a comparison. The plague the black plague, if someone was infected you killed the person and burned the body, lets say you are a knight trying with doctors etc to control the plague that destroyed europe and killed millions, you enter a home and see a family of 6, 4 infected coughting blood and 2 next to them that seem fine, would you really take the risk and put them i nquarantine with other people that might be okey or you do the only choise you have. My point in this mega text that i hope people read until the end is that arthas didnt do anything wrong , but also he didnt do somethign right, he did the only option he had, the world is not black or white, theres alot of grey in it. the bread analogy works perfectly, but lets say theres another person, me and a man see a fish we both want it to feed our familys, if we dont grab it and feed our children they will die, if i kill the man and save my family im "killing" by default that mans children. So am i doing somethign wrong well no and also yes, im dooming a family to death but saving mine, and if the man kills me his on the same boat, its not about right or wrong its the only choise we have. So arthas did WHAT HE HAD TOO should be the better phrase to be used imo Sorry for long text, loved the video and love the lore. If you read this far love you all have a incredible rest of a year :)
Even if he would not purge the city, because some of the people were not infected, these people would have been killed and turned by the undead, so they were already dead anyway.
He only does the most reasonable things giving his knowledge, running out of time and his small recourses. If he would succeed he would be praised like a hero. Even if he hadn't touch the sword and just died at the north he still would've win, because cult is already reviled and crushed by him while plague is not spreading anymore. So he did absolutely nothing morally wrong, he just make a mistake that costed him everything in the end. His actions before that was 100% justified, his actions after that are on completely different being, not on him since "Arthas" has already lost his soul and as good as dead.
The Culling _horrified_ people, he would have never been praised as a hero for it. He would have always been relived for it, Stratholme would have been his vilest action. It might very well have made people see him unfit for kingship, and the Cult of the Damned isn't crushed. It has been temporarily defeated and forced into hiding again, so we're back at square one.
@@DominionSorcerer Cult is crushed, they stop all their activities and lost most of their members with no hope of getting back without help of death knight. Like not all the naziz are dead rn but 3rd rich is long gone and will never return. And about horrified people - yeah, i remember how horrified people were singing songs and throwing flowers towards Arthas after he returned. I get that some people can't stand when good people do questionable things mate, but based on what we know from the game his actions were fully justified and his people were visibly agree with it. The only one who might still be bitching is an old coward Uther, but since he abandoned his people and his prince in a time of need nobody cares about him anymore.
@@annormal1414 the Cult isn't crushed, their activities are only temporarily halted and many cultists yet remain. They have been forced into hiding, but that's about it. Arthas was able to facilitate their return much more quickly because his return and subsequent patricide threw Lordaeron into chaos and afterwards it fell in a matter of days. And yeah. People were cheering on Arthas after it was believed he had returned home from Northrend victoriously - it was the return of their beloved darling prince after he had been gone for months, and he had saved the kingdom from then tyranny of the undead and demons. Good actions will quickly make people forget about bad actions. Based on what we know from the game, however, were his actions fully justified? Most of the people in Stratholme weren't infected. Arthas didn't even kill everyone in Stratholme, he left a lot of people still alive. He didn't burn any of the bodies they'd slain, leaving them to rot in the streets while torcing the city.
@@DominionSorcerer I say it pretty much safe to assume that if Arthas wouldn't return from the north scattered and beaten cult would just go instinct without any possibilities to do something. So yeah, despite that death knight Arthas managed to rebuild the cult , paladin prince Arthas crushed it for good prior. The only reason how they were rebuild so easily is the plot. Without a cure and any experience of how to deal with these problem you either kill everybody or face an undead army and lost way more people, as simple as that. And i say all population are infected, or at least most of them and anybody who for some implausible reason still doesn't will be killed by the horde of zombies right now, because people start turning right when our heroes came in town. Also you can't assume that he just left, we don't know anything of it. We saw some people gather and burning the bodies. Jaina comes when work is already goin, old fart returns after her. So it's much better to assume that the only person with enough influence - Arthas - ordered to burn the bodies before he left. Also if everybody in town was slain - means he killed everybody. But if he didn't kill 100% of population that means he mostly killed the infected ones, there for he did even better job at dealing with situation.
@@annormal1414 the cult was defeated, but not scattered. It was in hiding, that's the lore from Warcraft 3. Death knight Arthas managed to rally the cult so quickly because Lordaeron was days from being destroyed after Terenas' death, no one was able to set up a good defence. And no, I can assume that. The guy who actually made the Culling mission in Warcraft 3 and the subsequent cinematic literally says Arthas left without burning the dead. Why would Arthas do otherwise? Mal'ganis was forced to go to Northrend and the Scourge, as far as Arthas knew, was defeated in Lordaeron. His mind was deadset on revenge no matter the cost so he left for Northrend immediately.
So as someone deep into the topic - i argued with Blizzard here too cause the culling DID accomplish a LOT. Its a common military strategy called scorched earth. The inhabitants of Stratholme were already infected, they already turned when Arthas showed up and became servants of the scourge but yet in a weak state. So by killing the civilians that havent turned yet he 1) reduced enemy forces and their power 2) gave the people peace in death saving their souls as they would have been lost after turning 3) it was mercykilling. The people were doomed to become bloodthirsty cannibals devouring their loved ones. Ask yourself, if you were in that position would you rather be killed swiftly with a hammer to the head or go through the incredible pain of turning undead, loosing your soul and then attacking the people you loved and held dear? Yeah id rather die quick thx. The culling was the best strategic descission that could be made at that point in time - there is no way around it and every military thinking person would have done the exact same and we even have historical examples of real life where similiar methods were used to stop the plague from spreading and killing even more people where infected towns were burned down to save cities. For Arthas did nothing wrong - he did BUT...1) most evil stuff he did, he did AFTER being corrupted by frostmourne or after merging with nerzuhl so he wasnt himself anymore. Similarily he did show arrogance before that but all chars in warcraft have flaws. That said the tragedy of Arthas story IS that he tried to do everything wrong, acting for a greater good and willing to do anything to achieve it. Its a cautionary tale of fanatism - the greater good might not be worth the price to pay for it. That said we also know for a fact that without Arthas holding the scourge back it would have conquered the entire world of Azeroth so he in the end did acutally prevent the destruction of "his people". I also like to compare however as it is said Arthas is irredeemable despite having the excuse of having been mindcontrolled. Ok, but what about Jaina Proudmoore then? Her actions were outright genocidal, breaking the peace, warmongering causing another war with the Horde, she was so bad people believed she was replaced with a Dreadlord. But this bloodthirsty monster got a redemption story? What about Sylvannas, she caused more death and destruction than Arthas did with her new plague, the rekinling of the alliance-horde war, burning down Teldrassil, enslaving the valkyr...that arguably most evil of all warcraft characters - cause she doesnt even do it for a greater good just out of hatred for the living - that one got a redemption story. So if those 2 women get exhonorated than so should Arthas who wasnt nearly as bad as these 2. Also the culling isnt something unique in Warcraft just the scale is. The nightelves had no issue culling furbolgs that were about to be corrupted, same for moonkin and corrupted animals and they cold have afforded to look for a cure instead but didnt. The bloodelfs had no issue culling the wretched and those about to loose control, and dont even get me started on the forsaken. The red dragons did kill their own allies at wrathgate and so on yet i dont hear complaints about these events and tactics that by the way, the Lightforged also use. A lot actually
Those are some compelling points for sure. When it comes to point 3, yes me personally I would prefer the choice you mentioned - but the problem I have with that is I don’t speak for every citizen of stratholme. But yes, scorched earth is a good point you bring up. Just look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that aweful act was the beginning of 80ish years of peace amongst western nations. That kind of logic is why (in another video I explain this part) after careful consideration I came to the conclusion that Arthas made the right choice. But after making that video, listening to designer Dave I’ve come to the conclusion that it was the wrong choice. The way I see it the culling is an awful but effective strategy, the problem is if you’re going to do the cull you need to cull EVERYONE and Arthas doesn’t. He gets into a twisted race with Mal’Ganis and culls about a third to half of the city before abandoning the cull to chase after Mal’Ganis. I get that percentage from the 100 citizens he culls compared to the city population itself. Another thing is, if this was a normal zombie infection as we see in movies and tv and the infection was spread by biting then I’d be more inclined in saying the cull was the right choice - but it’s not. It’s only spread through consuming corrupted grain, which not every citizen would have done or had time to do and there would presumably be citizens who didn’t consume the bread at all. And ultimately everything they were doing in the North was meaningless. They were already warned by medivh that the North was lost and there was nothing they could do to save it - now of course, why listen to some rambling mad man you don’t know - but jaina was able to sense that he knew what he was talking about and they had already seen enough evidence to know that the North was indeed lost. I’ll just say this, there are arguments for culling stratholme - it’s a major city that if it fell to the undead it would bolster their forces - but it doesn’t matter. The undead could care less about stratholme, it was all a trap for Arthas because once Arthas had been angered enough to follow Mal’Ganis to northrend he just abandons culling the city and leaves it to the undead - but the undead leave too because it doesn’t matter if they convert the city or not in the grand scheme of things. Arthas was the prize and he had enough evidence not to fall into the trap. And the last thing I’ll say about it is, although I’m also against this too, the method in which Arthas chose to cull the city made no sense, especially when the population of the city is larger (it seems people can’t agree on the size of the city). The larger the city is, the less likely going in and culling citizens one by one is going to work. Of course you aren’t going to get everyone and people have time to get away. The most effective way is to do a controlled burn of the city and that is probably worse than the way Arthas did (which is one of many reasons why I’m against this method) but it would have at least been more effective and saved the lives of Arthas’ troops.
@@AlexBarrGameDev ah a man of culture i like that =) The Designer Interview is what got me hating on Blizzard, its a whole other story how they completly f ed the lore up after Legion and how all the retcons made everything worse - heck the Jailer basicly robbed every single warcraft character of their agency i.e. nobody would be at fault for anything they did cause they only did what they did cause of Jailer. I think Blizzard lost the plot nd wow should have ended with Legion where every major story threat was done and character stories had a satisfying conclusion. Anyway - my point is that Arthas (inspired by king Arthur) shows us a story that is told in wow again and again. Arthas tried to do what is right for a greater good willing to do morally wrong things in the process. Its the same thing Sargeras does. Its the same thing Nerzuhl did, its the same thing the ebon Legion does, its what Sylvannas uses as excuse. And the thing i find compelling is that they all may actually be right. IF the voidlords are indeed unstoppable and want to plunge the universe into endless agony...Sargeras is right and the universe is better of dead. If the legion wants to wipe out the entire universe Nerzuhl is right and killing most of the living to have an army capable of stopping the legion is right. If the forsaken cant reproduce without a new plague or enslaving valkyr, then indeed Sylvannas does the right thing for HER people. I like stories that are above childish good vs evil stories. They have a place and can exist and its not like Lordof the rings wasnt a great classic good vs evil story but i prefer more debth to a story. Hence i love Arthas for being the embodiment of "the road to hell is plastered with good intentions" Yes the plague didnt spread via bite that is correct but the grain in stratholme would have been redestributed to other villages, and the villagers wold have been soldiers in the opponents armies and those killed by the zombies would have been raised by the scourges necromancers. I think at the time, with the information Arthas had, he made the right call but he couldnt bear it either which is why he lost the connection to the light, and why it made him priorise revenge on Malghanis over protecting his people which in his mind was one and the same. You make a great deal about the strategy Arthas used to cull the city - it was awefully ineffective and could have been done better. And i agree it was all a trap for Arthas. Im also not saying that Arthas didnt do evil shit - the mercenary incident in northrend? Yeah absolutely mad, yet again a tactic that real commanders used as well and do to this day see false flag operations. If your people aint willing to fight for you, do something terrible, say "they" did it and you have an army rallied. My point is...if Arthas is irredeemebly evil...than so is Sylvannas, then so is Jaina, then so is Varian, Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan...yet all of them get redemption arcs and no one is complaining about their shit. That seems like a terrible double standard. The video that made me go "huh?" is Garrosh did nothing wrong cause...i can list a lot of things he did wrong out of the top of my head and i dont just mean morally but strategicly and from a flawed motivation XD what urks me is that Arthas story was, from warcraft 3 to wotlk a story of tragedy, a good soul ending up evil,. his last words show that he wasnt himself under frostmournes influence and that he didnt wanna do it. What they did to his legacy is beyond disrespectful. Arthas was once one of the most beloved heroes of Lordaeron and now they puss on his grave for stuff others did as well that the same people love and praise for the same evil shit.
@@OrkarIsberEstar yeah I prefer stories with depth too - that’s what made me love Warcraft 3 when I first played it as a kid because the culling of stratholme was the first mission/story to really make me think am I doing a good or bad thing? And it annoys me when a story could have more depth and doesn’t like in the movie Avatar if they had made unobtainium necessary for the survival of earth and humans then all of a sudden that story gets more compelling. As for a lot of the lore you mention, I really don’t know all of it - I’ve only played so far into wow but I do know a lot about the jailor now having conversations like these with people and it frustrates me as well.
@@AlexBarrGameDev sorry if i came off rude in my opening, im having these discussions on many youtubers comment section and most are...lets say not willing to have a discussion or claiming lore facts that they made up (cough doronsmovies is really bad at this^^) so im used to not having a reasonable discussion, i am positively surprised and you got a new subscriber. I do Warcraft Rp since Burning crusade came out and well the history of lore changes is a long one and while there were a few good retcons like Sargeras origin story, most were bad. The Jailor just retocnned the entire history of everything on azeroth for the worse. I think Rings of Power was very very very bad for the retcons to the lore but the Shadowlands expansion did more damage with just a single NPC. That said i still love warcraft, to me personally its the best game exclusive universe ever made (yes i include D&D) but in my headcannon i refuse to accept anything after Legion, to me it ended there and while i cant stop torturing myself by keeping up with lorechanges, i do my best to ignore it ever happened and my advice is...if you can stop yourself, dont read up on wow lore post Legion, its just really bad.
Fookin' finally someone else is saying it. Arthas used to be my favorite character following WC3. So many people love the Arthas novel that I figured it would cement my fondness for the character even more. That novel singlehandedly ruined Arthas for me. It portrays him as narcissistic, arrogant, and petulant that seeing him make all the choices he does leading to Frostmourne and the desolation of Lordaeron afterward seems like a foregone conclusion once any threat of significance was placed before him.
@@AlexBarrGameDev they are either trolling or arent worth argueing with because that kind of stupidity can't be fixed.(edit: for clarity, they fell for his joke.)
If Arthas went back to his dad (pre-Frostmourne) and talked about how to deal with the Undead, the latter would just side with Uther (whatever that guy's gonna say), since Uther is more tempered than the prince. It's useless to negotiate.
I love your Videos and your takes on one of my favorite videogames of all time (probably my favorite one) and i am missing one final take here and eveywhere else people talk about Arthas. Let me explain: The story of Arthas is a grand one but the relatability of this moment comes from the fact that we are all angry sometimes and we are all drawn to giving into this anger. Its most easily observed in romantic relationships. How often do loving parties behave in quite ridiculous ways due to intense emotions? Whenever i was in such situations, i always had at least a glimmer of consciousness telling me "yo dude, this is not the path of good, of love. This is not what you would want if you were in your right mind right now" BUT I didnt always listen to this voice. I sometimes treated people around me with less love than they deserved because i gave into my anger. The tale of Arthas is a reminder that every single day in your life you have the choice to turn around and do the right thing. But Arthas didnt, at any point. And just like a normal human he was consumed by grief and self hatred and suffered because of it. Just like we do when we do the wrong thing. And i believe (almost) everyone who beats his wife or children or mistreats his loved ones feels a similar way as Arthas. People do horrible things because they give into their anger or other emotions and we often forget how EASY it is to do so. We are only a sliver of sanity away from doing the same thing. Thats why its so important to always feed that voice of consciousness that reminds us of our true intentions and lets us act accordingly. THAT is NOT always easy, but it is always possible. Arthas didnt do it and he lost everything because of it. Dont be like Arthas the next time you are angry. THAT is the true lesson from this story.
3:40 I actually think you got it wrong here. Before I continue, just to clarify, I THINK ARTHAS DID THE WRONG THING. But in his head, this was his reasoning: Because Arthas killed his horse, the lesson is that, when the time comes next, that a sacrifice must be made, that HE (meaning Arthas) would step in that place. Arthas viewed killing the people in Stratholme as a great sin. A sin which would make him hated for the rest of his life (or unlife as it turned out). BUT, he did this, because in his mind, it was not about him. He viewed destroying his own reputation and having everyone hate him as OK, if it meant saving his people. He viewed taking Frostmourne exactly the same way. "I accept that Frostmourne will destroy my soul, because I owe it to my people. I was responsible for Invincible's death, and if my death/destruction of my soul saves Lordaeron, so be it."
Yeah I agree with this for sure, I just think people take that thinking and say because his intentions were in the right place, that this somehow absolves him from making a mistake
5:27 - if he just listened to Medivh and fled to Kalimdor it would be better but nah. Because of his ego he decided to murder innocent civilians. He's no better than his father Terenas. Because of him Lordaeron was destroyed. People are more valid than the land. You can restore the land, restore the kingdom but you can't restore human lives
He was not only egotistic - he was greedy as well He can't run away, because only a fraction of people can escape, he says that _all_ of his uninfected(and non-Stratholmian I guess) people are to survive through this plague and _all_ their blood is on his hands
Not exactly. I think we need to judge ourselves by our actions and or intentions. If you do good and have bad intentions, your good deeds will with time water down and become nothing more than a farce. If you do bad and have good intentions, your intention will suffer under you defending your actions and give ever less disturbances with your deeds.
Something that both you and the original video missed that I honestly think is important to the whole paladin arthas/death knight arthas is that the first soul frostmourne ever claimed was his. It's not ever explicitly stated what losing his soul actually did to him, but it's demonstrated pretty heavily through dialogue in the undead campaign. Especially his conversations with uther in mission 2 and tichondrius in mission 1 where he talks about how he just doesn't feel anything anymore aside from a desire to do what the blade tells him. So while he absolutely has self control and is capable of making his own decisions, he's a stronger servant and general that way, I think it's a more complex situation than just being his shadow because his core motivations are being influenced by outside factors and he doesn't truly have free will. When frostmourne was shattered every soul it ever stole was released, and that includes Arthas's soul. The reason Arthas was finally able to feel remorse and had those final words was because his soul had been returned to him and only in his final moments, with his soul returned and freed, was he able to look back and feel horror at everything he had done while undead because he previously lacked those emotions entirely.
And then Shadowlands happened and he got to relive that horror through being forced into a blade purely for the pleasure of being tortured more. His soul wasn't even needed for the blade the power came from the shadow crystal embedded in the hilt, the soul was just because torture is what the jailer did best.
Another thing about Arthas having autonomy as death knight is violation and torturing of Sylvanas. Ner'zhul didn't care about personal grievances so long as his goals are achieved, whereas defiling and borderline r@pe imagery of Sylvanas' torture in the comics which he was carrying out himself for near a year according to the story, felt and were painted as sadist, cruel and personal. Even in the Sealed Chest where he kept his most priced keepsakes, amongst all the heartwarming items, he kept vial of the Blood of Sylvanas from days of him torturing her. Say what you want about how Alex "Women abuser" Afrasiabi, who was writting Sylvanas as a cold heart, villainess "Bitch"(Garrosh was his favorite character) and made Sylvanas go completely off the walls by the time of 9.2.5 due to Danuser crafting Jailer and that BS story arc. But before Afrasiabi kept dripping small hints (like raising blood elves in SoO which went against her personal beliefs and trauma that was inflicted on her by Arthas) and Danuser finishing both Sylvanas and Arthas off in terms of lore consistency, Sylvanas was well written, most interesting character WC IP had, Arthas was simply more iconic.
At 12:12 Hirumaredx does not make it clear, but it is not just about ending the World, but essentially gaining total or more control over it. And yes denying more power to preserve the life of others does sound like a moral decision and while it does not necessarily make you a good person, it tells a lot and means there must be morals working inside of him. Think how many dictators with Arthas' power at that point would infact use that power to gain control over the World, even if it means killing others. Arthas by no means is flawless, or sinless, but under normal conditions he would not have become the Lich King... and this is what makes it a tragedy. In a same fashion another fictional figure Anakin Skywalker became evil, because many of the conditions he was under in often forced his hand. Neither had some megalomaniac goal or were after some riches, one wanted to defend his homeland and the other wanted to protect his love. And it is a shame what both became (morally speaking). However with Arthas, it is a strong point, that he was the first to have his soul/will be consumed by Frostmourne, which slowly twisted him into the Deathknight, and this is why I believe, that inspite of his flaws and sins is at the very least a decent man. He was not in control. Whereas Darth Vader was, yet decided to embrace his new life and renounced it later. Arthas never had the option to renounce his state, as the video put it he fell into a trap and there was simply no way out. Many others however do have a way out, but stay in their evil ways... His friends and mentors weren't tricked, but then again they never offered a viable alternate solution. Uther never showed his other way, the King was not having the situation under control and Muradin at the end essentially advised Arthas to concede. If Arthas was presented with a choice just maybe one tactically and strategically less sound, then we could say he picked badly. But he was not, he could choose between doing nothing and letting everything play out (will not end well), he could choose to listen to Medivh (a total stranger, ontop of this the guy who lead the orcs into Azeroth) or continuing on and eliminating those who orchestrated the plague (the move which seems in his position for obvious reasons the most logical).
Arthas had little choice in the matter that's what people typically fail to see and of the few choices he had he arguably makes the most reasonable ones with the info/time he is given even going against his own morality while everyone acts emotional and provides 0 solutions to the monumental problems ahead. Those who say Arthas made the wrong choices typically cant offer a better one and Im not only talking about the culling. Arthas was a doomed man in the long run and so were his people, what makes him the hero is how immediately after he realizes that he becomes willing to sacrifice all he is to prevent the inevitable regardless of whether he fails or not. In the warcraft lore nowadays there are few stories and are this grey. It is typically all black and white, right and wrong. All choices Arthas was given were plainly horrible in the long run and in order to do good he had to act bad. That does not make him a villain it makes him a victim of a scheme that was made long before he was born
One problem here is that even Jaina, a person who also knew the Plague, DID nothing. She didn't propose another option, despite her knowledge as a wizard, nor did she try and stop Arthas. Meaning, even she understood that it was the only choice they had. Unfortunately, she wanted to keep herself clean and let Arthas bear all the burden of picking that choice. As for Uther; 1. He didn't knew about it, meaning they'd have to spend time to explain it to him. 2. As a Paladin and an Old Man, he would've taken ages to form a plan trying to avoid the "worst option". And that's the problem, Arthas knew they don't have time.
Literally this. They could have at least stopped Malganis from infected the healthy citizens, but instead they let them die and bugger off, because they can't stand the sight. Arthas was very flawed, but he at least realized that someone had to do something and not just go away and hope that the dreadlord is not going to use the undead horde to kill the entire city.
I feel like a lot of people miss a critical fact about Arthas' decision to initiate the purge. The previous mission lasted 3 days and 3 nights, where Arthas got no sleep and was constantly under attack. It's implied they go straight from that mission to Stratholme, without delay. 3 days with no sleep will make you delirious, and even hallucinate. 3 days of constant fighting will lead to you being incredibly stressed. Of course Arthas made really REALLY dumb fucking decisions at Stratholme, he wasn't in any mental state to make good decisions. Which was planned for. You think those three days were an accident? No, it was all part of the plan to fuck with Arthas and get him where the Lich King wanted him to be.
Stratholme was doom before he came. Sure, Arthas was a hotheaded person. But there was not hope for Straholme. There was not cure for the Scourge Virus. If Arthas have not purger the city it will leave more Undead.
Well that and also he had no other choice: if Arthas hadn't gone in there, Mal'Ganis would have almost certainly turned the entire city into undead and then probably used that army to attack the next one. When Arthas is done, a lot of people are dead at his hands but... the city survived and the undead horde is stopped. Horrid as it was, it prevented a greater evil and there was no alternative to stopping them. There was no cure or efficient means to restrain all the infected civilians.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel but Stratholme didn't survive. Arthas didn't even cull the entire city, so he's clearly not there for that if you look at his actions. Arthas was there to hunt down Mal'ganis but the moment Mal'ganis left, Arthas left too, leaving the city and a lot of survivors left behind - survivors that very well might be infected, who now have to burn their own dead and their city.
@@DominionSorcerer That's not accurate at all. He literally killed enough infected to stop the city from falling. That was literally the point of the mission.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel how isn't it accurate? Arthas ultimately wasn't there to save Stratholme, he went there to hunt down Mal'ganis. When Mal'ganis leaves Stratholme, Arthas leaves too, leaving the city and countless survivors behind. Many of whom could be infected.
Let's face the facts: (fictitious facts in the game) 1. Frostmourne has overwhelming mind control power. This is repeatedly mentioned throughout Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne expansion. Even when the Lich King was weakened due to Illidan's magic, Arthas remained loyal when Sylvanas and ghouls went rogue. This is due to the sword's powers as explained by Kelthuzad. 2. In Warcraft 3, Medivh told Arthas: "This land is lost! The shadow has already fallen and nothing you can do will deter it. If you truly wish to save your people, lead them across the sea, to the west." Which meant that culling of Stratholme or not, Lordaeron will fall to the scourge. Later events proved this statement to be correct. Which meant if Arthas did sail to Kalimdor with his people, we may never see the Lich King as he was in WOW. Maybe he would take another paladin or someone else but that's irrelevant to the point. This might be Arthas' biggest mistake in his life. From the scourge's point of view, the culling of Stratholme is irrelevant to their goal. This meant that even if Arthas stayed in Lordaeron during the entire campaign of Warcraft 3 and combated the plague with non violent means (quarantine, holy magic, medicine, snake oil, etc.). The scourge would still take Lordaeron and Arthas regardless. It's like Medivh said, the only way is to the west. The only human who saw truth in these words was Jaina. 3. Medivh told Jaina: Medivh: "The dead in this land might lie still for the time being, but don't be fooled. Your young prince will find only death in the cold north." Jaina: "You! Arthas is only doing what he believes is right!" Medivh: "Commendable as that may be, his passions will be his undoing. It falls to you now, young sorceress. You must lead your people west to the ancient lands of Kalimdor. Only there can you combat the shadow and save this world from the flame." Both of them are factually correct. 4. At the end of Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne expansion, Arthas broke the ice block encasing the Lich King and took his helm/crown. Then the Lich King said: "Now, we are one." This meant either their souls merged to become one or that Nerzhul posessed Arthas' body. Either way, Arthas was powerless to the Lich Kings actions from this point on if he wasn't affectively already under mind control. 5. Arthas has made many mistakes that lead him to become the death knight and consequently the Lich King. People can judge him however they want but most, including the narrator of this video, agrees that his intentions were good. As the video have mentioned repetitively. 6. Arthas did kill Malganis. 7. Varian Wrynn, a childhood play mate of Arthas took the role as King of Stormwind, the next human capital after the fall of Lordaeron. Facts in the real world: For the most parts of the free world, when a criminal is on trial. His intentions absolutely matter and will affect his sentence more or less depending on the scenario and crime committed. For example, if I was performing CPR and accidently crushed his ribs and killed him. I am an idiot and should be ashamed. I killed a person. It is my fault that he is dead. However, it's unlikely that I will get a death sentence. Regardless of where this took place. It is even less likely that I will get a death sentence if there were people around me telling me to push harder or holding my hands. Crimes should and will, if caught, be punished. The intentions of the criminal will also almost always affect their sentence.
The thing is he did not even try to save the people of the city during the cull. He treated every single person as already infected and that is not the actions of a paladin.
And if he didn't? If he saw a healthy looking family and told them to get to safety.. then when they are on the road, in another village, the husband turns and spreads the plague of undeath from there.
You're DesignerDave and had no control over Warcraft 3 Lore or story progression. You have zero authority to dictate lore ramifications of a map you made, because you only made the map, not the story.
@@frostmagemarii 100% False, I worked with Metzen on the story and provided feedback and wrote my own lines for the mission. I created the cinematic, the pacing, the gameplay mechanics, the units you start with... EVERYTHING within the map is my direct work or directly influenced by me. You trying to rewrite history for events you have NO KNOWLEDGE OF is pathetic... -_- Get a life, loser. Get a freaking life.
It actually worked btw, Arthas defeated the plague of undead in Lordearon, Medivh was wrong. If he had not gone to Northrend that would've been it, just prepare for the next ploy from the Dreadlords.
I think the other people could've stopped Arthas like Uther, Jaina and his father like stand in front of him but they didn't do anything they just left him and that was wrong from them plus I know he could have done the right thing
Also remember that’s Atheroth, a dark place to live where war is something normal and we got a twisted morality there as a something normal . Strathholme was a point of grey moral peak where we got a lesser evil to win over bigger . Arthas is a prince who must decided the fate of his own people . If there was medieval problem with even a black plague , people didn’t saw something really evil in idea of saving a millions on a cost of thousands I’m not trying to justifying genoside but we can understand all this better and not play a white knight from our point of view
Interesting. This also goes into the Anduin problem in Shadowlands. Where does the wonderful, pure Anduin stop and the monster begin? Yeah, the Jailer (what a horrible bad guy btw) took him over as a zombie minion, but Anduin was in there. Could he be blamed for not fighting harder and kicking the control the Jailer had? At the end, there was the same type of remorse, that he could have fought harder....and that he kinda liked the bad guy thing and that made him uncomfortable. How then is this not like Arthas? First: the Frostmourne blade and the helm were made by the Runecarver by the orders of the Jailer to ensnare someone on Azeroth so he could get a toe-hold on the planet. Arthas was that "someone" so how is the acquisition of the weapon by the Jailer (the weapon being Arthas) any different than Anduin's being the weapon? Was what was driving the actions of Arthas, the Lich King curse of the Jailer driving it, or was he fighting it with the shred Arthas had a inside? And did he really fight against the curse or, like Anduin, did he like this bad guy thing just a bit? If Arthas was doing what he thought was correct, misguided as it was, and the blade turned him into someone evil after he acquired it in a bid to end the plague by ending Mal'ganis. The Jailer was behind both things, so how is Anduin any different than Arthas?
This is a very good question, and unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the lore up until that point so I don't know the story of Anduin. But with Arthas, the point is pretty clear to me. Because even if we say that once Arthas "fell into the trap" and wielded frostmourne, that ALL of his agency was gone, and that therefor "the original" Arthas cannot be judged for the actions after he wielded the sword - even in that scenario we can still judge Arthas BEFORE he fell into the trap. When we are introduced to Arthas he wants to massacre a clan of Orcs indiscriminately, he then goes on to cull Stratholme, chase Mal'Ganis and burn his men's ships down when ordered to come home and then his friend is killed because of his actions. There is a pretty quick build up in bad decisions. Since I don't know the story of Anduin, I'll try to give my take through logic and hopefully it'll apply, but the way I see it, we have to look at the choices these characters have available. If you have a starving family and you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, sure it is unethical to steal the bread, but having the family starve to death is even worse and you might not have any other options so you pick the best one - save your family. So It just comes down to what actions you have available to you, choosing between which of the actions available that leads to the greatest amount of good to the most amount of people and at the same time which action leads to the least amount of harm done to the least amount of people. Arthas had some tough calls, and there very often weren't ideal outcomes either way. but he always chose the worst options IMO and that is what led him to falling into the trap, so he is at the very least responsible up until wielding frostmourne. As for Anduin, I can't say, but since you've played it and know the story I'd just ask: did he have any better choices available to him before he became controlled by the Jailor?
I don't know Warcraft lore but i know thismuch, as a Necromancer, killing everyone and turning them to your undead army is ALWAYS a bad idea, the obvios reason would be that you need a healthy LIVING population to be able to keep your army growing. the less obvios reason is that you'd be just bored the hell out of your mind for a while untill you encounter something you won't be able to overcome by yourself, be it by lack of forces or creativity due to lack of perspective.
Everything Arthas did is objectively good, as we later learn that his actions are largely fixed points in time and crucial for reality to continue. Not only was he a young man being mislead by actual demonic forces, but time itself had fated him to do it. So he really can't be guilty of anything, other than playing his role like everyone else does. There is no free will in Azeroth.
I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Even if the history is set in stone, that doesn't excuse the decisions people make which causes that history to happen. Until a person is being mind controlled, they're responsible for their own actions.
Reason is because most people can't face the facts that Arthas was evil for the sake for be evil. Ever before he took Frostmune, Arthas was already a bitter, prideful, and vindictive person. His fall was for his own humorous, and no for unse force. He did everything wrong out of pride. The same Anakin Skywalke fall for his own humorous, and no because a unsee forces.
Arthas killing everyone in Stratholme is simply a mercy i would appreciate a lot. It would be a weight off my mind to know my corpse wouldn't wander around, hurting and infecting other innocent people. If i was a citizen of Stratholme, i would seek Arthas and make sure he killed me.
I often make a habit of poking Dave with "Arthas Did Nothing Wrong" to the point that it's a running gag in his streams. The thing is, I don't agree with Dave on the matter for a very simple reason. 5:49 This is it. You nailed it. This is the thing that deflates both yours and Dave's argument about Arthas. On your first playthrough, the players and Arthas both lack for information and are doing what they think is right based on that limited amount of information. You know what Arthas doesn't get though? A second playthrough. People who played the campaign go back to The Scourge of Lordaeron and then proceed to dunk on Arthas with information he could not possibly know. Nor is he the guy who built the map. Stratholme wasn't even built to Dave's tastes. In one of his streams, he said that he didn't want all of the civilians to turn and force you to destroy potentially innocent people, but that's not what made it into the final game. Likewise, if the mission is failed, the zombies turn _immediately_ and overrun the Alliance base. So it's understood within the game that failure means a tide of the dead will overrun the Northlands. Per Medivh's statements after the culling, Arthas did successfully manage to buy time. Given that both culling and not culling result in the undead appearing in force anyway, the culling is the strategically superior option because it allows for recovery and more time to act. 6:31 Dude, do you think Arthas can see the floating text that positively identifies who an individual ghoul is? You also can't say for certain that this isn't in fact an Easter Egg because Lil' Timmy can also be found in Theramore when Rexxar shows up. The the UI and easter eggs do not constitute an argument because they are not visible to Arthas. They're utterly irrelevant for argumentation about the character's motivations because something like ghoul Timmy is not knowable to Arthas and it's not clear that it isn't just a joke. Beyond this, I would like to point out two things: Tichondrius admitting that Arthas' soul was stolen by Frostmourne and Kel'thuzad stating that Arthas was deliberately chosen by the Lich King to be his champion. Given Arthas was facing off against ages old demonic forces and a demigod that could infiltrate minds, how was a 23 year old supposed to deal with that? I actually got Dave to pause and think about this in one of his streams when I pointed out that Arthas was like, 23 when this happened and Americans are wrong to trust 18 year olds with student loans they can't pay back. Likewise, the much older Uther failed completely in his duties to be an older man and mentor and instead got into a pissing match with a frat aged hothead. Uther should know better. He was 64 when he died and he was a paladin who very specifically was a source of wisdom and refuge for Arthas. Amazingly, there was even a bit of good writing in Shadowlands where Uther takes responsibility for failing Arthas. Cuz he did.
I think purging the city was warranted, although it likely should have been possible to save some people. But having them turn into aggressive zombies that then attack and possibly infect others....that would lead to a lot more death. Its more pragmatic good rather than morally good. The clip from the developer just shows you should burn them after killing them, which, Arthas probably should have known. After Frostmourne though? Its really hard to say how much of Arthas' will remained, especially since the writers at Blizzard went completely of the fucking rails. Although, using Bolvar as an Example, Arthas had some issues in comparison, mainly his recklessness.
When Uther and Jaina abandoned Arthas, it made his fall all that easier. He made the right call with Stratholm and those two put their personal feelings above the good of the kingdom. They loved him and it was good times with ole paladin Arthas when the decision were easy, but the second he had to put on the crown it wasn't fun for them anymore. Who knows what would have happened if they stayed, but we do what happened when they left. The dev trying to make a modern day analogy was stupid. There was no Lorderon CDC or an Azeroth doctors without borders. I would bet all the no money I have that had if York had been assaulted by a plague of undeath unleashed by a demon then King Henry might have done the same.
Depends on your viewpoint. If you have a more utilitarian mindset (way more common than you think) then Arthas didn’t really do anything wrong until be picked up frostmourne. As soon as he picked up frostmourne his actions are evil no matter what your viewpoint is. When it comes to the demonetization of that town. Well.. there was no cure, better to stop the problem at its source than turn into zombies. Thinking there will ever be a cure is too unrealistic and idealistic. There’s one hole in this though: culling them just makes them undead anyway. If that weren’t the case I would back him up here.
I would say that dissension was the first undeniably evil act. Forcing his men to fight a mad war against explicit orders and killing the mercenaries for following his orders is definitely evil.
The culling of Stratholme wasn't morally grey. It was morally correct and the only right decision. Also, if the undead had any will enough to affect the lore then the entire Lorderon wouldn't have died in WC3. The Lich King had control over every undead. That was the Lore. This was 100% true until the Frozen Throne expansion.
Not all along right up to a point. Also straholm was burned aftewards. That would nto be possible or would cost many more lives if was already full of undead instead of just corpses
I am a cynical person that conciously goes for lawful and non-destructive option, while I love a good corruption arc in my entertainment (Breaking Bad is the best series ever camp here), I cannot understand this trend of empathetic individuals trying to argue not guilty for absolute monsters when presented with humanly relateable story of descent into madness. Guys, stop whitewashing Snapes and Arthases and whoever. Actions matter, and when we talk about many deaths, malicious or not, intent is only relevant for the harsher sentence. These characters are villains. Good, compelling, relatable ones, but that's it.
PS: I may start a war in comment section, but this is something that bothers me greatly personally as a trend. I am Russian citizen (not for long) and I know very well of scopes and twisted nature of this affliction irl. I keep hearing misplaced compassion from our gentle souled liberals that fled the cuntry first, how they are so so teary-sorry for Ukrainians but whine 'our booooys thooo are victims tooo, let's fund them so that in the frontlines they have comfy socks'. In the frontlines where they loot and pillage and raze to the ground property of citizens of a sovereign country. And when I tell these inviduals 'our boys' are criminals the moment they step across the border or load an artillery round, they look at me as if I am demon from hell that came to torment them with international legalese and Nuremberg trials and cases of Yugoslavian militias being prosecutad from all sides (though Serbs the most because of disproportionate amount of crimes against civilians and their sheer brutality, ofc). Misplaced empathy for abusers and psychos for me comes third place only to manipulation from a victim stance practiced by vulnerable narcissists, and then simple self-righteous and/or sadistic predation and bullying being the top of the top of human shit I can absolutely not take in real life but love observing in good entertainment.
Yess, Breaking Bad is amazing. I love a good corruption arc too, just as much I love a good villain redemption arc like Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Honestly, this is exactly why I'm trying to challenge ideas like this. I know most people are probably going to say "Oh, it's just a video game/entertainment" or "fantasy morality is different from real world morality" or something like that but stories have a greater purpose than just entertainment. A great movie is "The Northman" which is a retelling of Amleth the Dane, which is the story Hamlet is based off of. It's about a character who is in a cycle of violence and has the chance to break that cycle but doesn't, and ends up dead. The Star Wars prequel movies are about how a democracy can turn into a dictatorship and what to watch out for AND how a good man can become evil. And then of course there's Arthas as this video is about. These all have valuable lessons to teach us, and for someone to choose to ignore those lessons because they simply like a character is mind boggling to me.
@@AlexBarrGameDev as an outsider, it's so bizzare and unbelievable it's nauseating. Worst thing is now sweet summer children who did not inherit with mother's milk eerie awareness of Gulag and special agents and all Orwellian goodies from the old regime shy away from even trying to stay aware of primordial darkness lurking still in many places in the world, and, like legacy diseases creeping back where vaccination went lax, they are allowed to creep back. Vonnegut to them is confusing, and I won't even talk about Three Body Problem here, the discussion went along the lines 'westerners discover how people from totalitarian societies feel about world and are in total denial', Apocalypse now is not flashy enough to be a blockbuster, need AI to plant a Homelander somewhere in there, Oppenheimer and Schindler's List are unrelateable and boring and 'too white and male', if they ever bother to watch even. And so we get 300 IQ writing of Галя Электродрель (Galina Electric Drill, this is how we locally called that guyladriel) in Rings of Power frame by frame reenacting our pretty (disturbing) Arian officer threatening and drawing blood from incapacitated captive but supposed to be a hero, and total inability to process reality to the detriment of all, because these people vote too.
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@@AlexBarrGameDevintention with deception lead to destruction -bible
it's weird because the same people will say Sylvanas is irredeemable.
I think it' all boils down to edgy dudes who see themselves in Arthas... and by themselves, I mean someone who is willing to commit horrific violence for what they believe to be 'right'.
If anyone wants to portray Arthas as a villain because "actions matter" I at least expect them to offer any better course of action than the ones he took. And no speculations are not enough. You are Arthas, you just realized your kingdom is threatened with an imminent annihilation by a plague that the wisest among your kin are unaware of and would need significant time to comprehend and maybe cure while any moment wasted means the plague spreads further and further until it becomes impossible to stop. There, make a choice better than what Arthas did
Totally disagree with Stratholm.
1) He took the city and burned bodies
2) he killed all undead
So pretty much no one was turned into undead and Malganis wasn't able to gather huge army
He culled about half the city at most before leaving them on their own (if we are going by how things happened in Warcraft 3). The remaining unplagued citizens did the burning. He didn’t kill all the undead, they just left once Arthas left as corrupting him was the goal
@@AlexBarrGameDev He killed those that ate the plagued grain, and they were turning into the undead; is that not a thing any of you seem to remember?
Not everyone in the city ate the grain, there were still some unplagued citizens remaining, even if very few.
@@AlexBarrGameDev What? That's not what happened. The undead left once Arthas had deprived them of the infected in the city and he followed them, not the other way around. Remember? Malganis did that whole teleporting-away-thing. Arthas didn't personally burn the corpses but... that seems like such a minor grievance compared to everything else that is going on. He didn't personally burn them in the previous missions, either, so what? Even if those had started rising as skeletons, he still wouldn't have made the situation any worse if he hadn't shown up at all.
Things to note about Arthas caracter :
- As demonstreted , Arthas starts off Human Campaing good alingned , but , for each mission that you complete , he starts to become more and more angry and desperate for a solution to the plague mystery
- During the defence of Hearthglen , Arthas is the only person who *knows* that the plague turns the infected into undead instead of just being deadly (He also saw how a normal ass peasent that turns into a Ghoul/Zombie can go toe to toe with a trained and armed footman as seen in the introduction of the mission where some troops are training and some of them just die to the newly turned peasants , even tho they were well prepared for it) and he almost gets overwhelmed by the undead army , if it wasen´t for Uther saving him , Arthas would be dead.
- Arthas was wrong/right about the culling
- right because it was the fastest way to reduce the number of potencial numbers for the undead , saving commoners from an ill fate (Would you rather get slowly eaten by a ghoul or get a fast death by a giant hammer ?) and also Mal´Ganis was in the city so the situation just went from bad to worse.
- Wrong because the culling itself goes against everything about being a paladin from the holy church , it´s immoral , killing his own people leaves the survivors (if any) scarred for life and Arthas also fired uther
Final note : There wasen´t much solution to the Stratholme problem
- Not enough time to plan something
- Not a way to identify infected from non infected (Since there wasen´t any mage there , and Jaina wasen´t trained on that regard)
- Trying to ´´Quarentine´´ the city would be a disaster , the number of commoners on stratholme alone outnumbers artha´s army (wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stratholme#:~:text=In%20its%20glory%20days%2C%20Stratholme%20housed%20nearly%2025%2C000%20people.) source
- No way to ´´heal´´ the disease since even today on wow lore , there wasen´t been invented a cure to the plague , not even super powerfull beings can save you from it , as seen in wotlk where a crusader gets infected and not even a Naaru/Aspect/Druid can stop the Plague
All excellent points, I agree there was no perfect way to handle Stratholme. As for what choice I'd prefer, that's one of the problems I have with Arthas' solution. Because even if I prefer Arthas coming into the city, my neighbour might not. Arthas is depriving the citizens of their free will - maybe a citizen didn't eat any grain and would have been able to escape the city had Arthas let them fend for themselves.
But the free-will of the citizens alone, isn't enough to say Arthas' plan shouldn't be utilized.
I think the best way to handle stratholme (aside from just straight up heading back to Lordaeron) would have been for Arthas to explain enough about the plague to convince Uther to kill only zombies, which Uther probably would have agreed to. Between Arthas, Uther and Jaina, one could have focused on fighting Mal'Ganis, one could have focused on fighting the zombies as they turn and the other could focus on fighting the undead army/establish some sort of quarantine/barricade to keep the city contained as best as possible. Still not ideal, still has many flaws, but I think it would have been the better alternative
@@AlexBarrGameDev Arthas didin´t have time to explain the effects of the plague to Uther , let alone make an strategy to contain a humungus amount of undead .
- The citizens of Strat wouldn´t have the slight ideia about the plagued grain, So even if some of them didin´t eat the grain themselves , Family member/Neighbors that ate it would ravage the city from within
- Best way to deal with the Strat situation is to Jaina make an emergency call teleport to dalaran and calls as many magic users as possible , make them cast/maintain the spell that was used on dalaran (the one that kills undead pretty fast) on the city , while arthas and co deal with malganis.
@@fllintvancleff2110 I agree 100% with the last two points, especially with the Dalaran plan - that probably would have been the best way to deal with it.
But I very much disagree with the first point. I get speed is important here, but at the cost of losing that much support, which he desperately needs? And how long would it actually take to tell Uther what he needs to know about the plague in this situation - 5 minutes? I don't imagine it would have even taken that long
@@fllintvancleff2110 Those spells didnt exist until much later though. Which is exactly why Arthas made the right call. Even after the mages got a closer look into the plague it took them quite a while to figure out how to counter it and later use said spells against Arthas. If Arthas let the mages handle stratholme all infected citizens would turn on their people long before the dalaran mages had any clue on how to counter the plague. Arthas had no time to waste trying to convince anyone because nobody had seen first hand just how powerful this plague was like he did. It was even futile to try and convince Uther to give up hope on the people of Stratholme because he just would not believe that they were beyond salvation
@@Porkey798 "Made the right call" for who? No one, literally no one benefitted from Arthas' decision. For him it was this moment that truly damned him, and as a result his entire kingdom. Yes there's no good solution here. But let's not pretend he did the 'right thing'. Or made anything but an emotional snap decision to kill an entire city. While also refusing to explain to his loyal companions why, losing all support, and eventually even getting him recalled. In no way did this actually improve anything, it made it drastically worse.
Arthas's final sendoff in Shadowlands did the character a huge injustice.
20:36 Also, that's a gross simplification of what's the motives of Lich King (or at least, Ner'zhul part of him) was.
Planet can go fuck itself, the fight against the Legion was never about the survival. It was about Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Because when someone skins your soul alive (as well as the pathetic amount of people you've managed to walk with you through haphazard dimensional gate) and traps you into shadowfrost crystal, it becomes kinda personal.
When you think about it, Warcraft 3 is a happy story about the man who lost everything, building from the ashes while being under watchful ire of dreadlords, playing them and their master, building and army, sabotaging Legion to the point Archimonde - the brother of his very nemesis - dies so hard he explodes, and even acquiring the body of his own, finally being free and ready for a big rumble Scourge vs Legion.
according to the lore ner'zhul was destroyed by arthas after they united so that's not the reason for trying to stop the legion
@@who41683 that was a retcone made by a stupid book nobody cares about.
Exact game events and dialogues contradict it and prove LK is both Arthas and Ner'zhul.
I believe that Artas did only one thing wrong, the thing that weren't even mentioned in the video - when King Therenas called back his troops he hired mercenaries to burn his peoples ships and then lied to his men that the mercenaries burned the ships on their own, not on his behalf. Muradin mentiones that before talking up the frostmourne Arthas lied to his men and betrayed his mercenaries. It was a narrative highlight for Arthas descent. Everything before that was perfectly justified, everything after was Arthas under the effect of frostmourne and as such he was deprived of his free will.
I always found the narrative around Arthas during these 2 campaigns (Human and Undead) very weird and muddled. For exemple it is apparent to me that in second mission when Arthas is angered by the orcs it is supposed to foreshadow his later descent because Uther warns him that if bloodlust would take hold of them they would be as bad as the orcs. It's a weird remark given that the orcs got to be killed and they kidnapped and sacrificed people but it always seemed to me like a clumsy writing.
As for the matter of Death Knight Arthas being himself or not - I am aware that narratively considering Undead Arthas as a separate character that was possessed by Frostmorune is very boring, bland and there is no chance that it was authorial intent in this case. However by Arthas own admission he no longer felt any remorse or grief after picking up Frostmourne and we do know that Lich king managed to mind control his minions which also would include Arthas, which practically does absolve human Arthas of Undead Arthas deeds. Everybody has their shadow, however we do generally manage to control it, Arthas on the other hand was apparently magically deprived of that ability. We get to learn more about him though his undead shadow but everybody has urges, the key moral element - our will and ability to control these urges, was absent in Death Knight Arthas.
As for the matter of Stratholme, to me it always looked like a form of trolley problem. If a train would run over 5 people should you redirect it to run over only one person? Except that in Arthas case it seems like that one person would have died anyways so it seemed even clearer that Arthas was in the right. The arguments that Arthas made a bad call were always weird. Like it weren't really communicated well that culling was futile in the goal of stopping the scourge. The narrative was focus at how horrible was Arthas decision to kill citizens of Stratholme without really explaining why. Explanation that the dead would be risen anyways doesn't vibe with me that much because then Scourge wouldn't need any plague, they could just storm all th graveyards, also it was never even implied that infested people upon being killed would rise from the plague anyways. The interlude after culling showed people burning the dead which as a child always seemed to me like a dramatic way of performing burial but now I can see it as a very effective measure against the corpses being risen. Medive comments about Arthas work being futile seemed more like him just wanting to convince Jaina to go to Kalimdor.
People like to say that there were no good choice for Arthas during Stratholme situation. That no matter what he would do he would be a monster which is the tragic element. Still I don't think that this is a good argument for culling being immoral. I remember that I heard once somebody doing some talk with a philosopher and saying that Ethics are difficult matter - to do evil or good and the philosopher replied that this is a very easy choice - do good, the problem is when you have to choose between two evils. In real life we frequently struggle to fight our dark urges and do good rather than evil despite the difficult situations that we face. However, frequently we face a different moral difficulty, our own personal cullings of Stratholme in which we have to choose between evil and lesser evil and we have to judge which one is the lesser one. Voting for candidate we deem improper for the office being the most mundane example that comes to mind. So we need to ask ourselves - if a person would face trolley problem - would they really be immoral no matter what they do? Is being evil a matter of mere circumstance, does the fact alone that we face morally difficult situations makes us evil because no matter what we do something horrible will happen? How can you be considered immoral just because you had no choice but to do something horrible?
i will say when muradin said what was engraved on the stone, the player knew what it ment. As did Arthas, The moment Arthas touched the unfrozen frostmourne it reaped his soul first and Arthas no longer was in-control of his body, he could only watch as a by-stander what his body was doing. One of the books outside of WC/WoW explains that during the halls of reflection when the lich king was about to finish off Jaina by choking her to death. Arthas's Soul screamed out that he wouldn't let that happen, which is why the lich king lost control for a second in halls of reflection and makes a remark about the "stupid" necklace around his neck he couldn't touch. The necklace was a conduit/tether even though a weak tether was what let his soul influence his body slightly.
It showed that although he could never fully regain control of his body, he could under extreme worry? love? halt the lich king for a few seconds. It was only after tirion shattered frostmourne did arthas's soul reconnect fully with his body for the first time in years. Which although shadowlands was eh, sanctum showed that when frostmourne shattered ner'zhul and arthas split and his weakened soul was used as to temper anduins sword to continue arthas's torture. So even when arthas was finally glad he had been stopped the jailer forced him to relive those moments through anduine.
The jailer didn't need to temper kingsmourne with arthas's soul because the shadow crystal imbued in the sword was enough but having someone forced and dominated once more after feeling relieved it's over is such delicious torture since that's what he was obviously known for finding the most twisted ways to torture souls in the maw.
Thing about Arthas, he had full autonomy as death knight, since Ner'Zhul had to reach out to him to warm him about the ambush he was heading into as well as their connection fading due to Illidan's attack on Icecrown. Thus Ner'zhul was not omnipresent to control or even influence Arthas when he was on the eastern kingdoms. Using his autonomy in creepy and sadistic violation and torturing of Sylvanas. Ner'zhul didn't care about personal grievances so long as his goals are achieved, whereas defilement and borderline r@pe imagery of Sylvanas' torture in the comics which he was carrying out himself for near a year according to the story, felt and were painted as sadist, cruel and personal by both comics and WC3.
Even in the Sealed Chest where he kept his most priced keepsakes, amongst all the heartwarming items, he kept vial of the Blood of Sylvanas from days of him torturing her.
5:22
"To think that Arthas could take on Malganis is insane."
But he... literally won. Sure, Malganis might have been holding back to give him a chance, for some reason, but if he hadn't done anything, all of Stratholm would have died that night.
He did nothing wrong in Stratholme, it's better to kill a person while they are still human, instead of letting them become undead (which would have happened).
It slows down the spread of the disease, and since the souls exists in this universe - people are suffering when they are undead, so killing them is an act of mercy.
Yeah sure, I agree that that is probably a better fate for the infected, but here’s the problem, not everyone ate the grain as seen in the cinematic following the culling mission. Now I’d bring up the whole free will problem when it comes to the entirety of the citizens of stratholme, but even if we ignore that and say it was for the greater good to cull the infected citizens, both for their good and the rest of the kingdom, you can’t really say that for the citizens who didn’t eat the grain and they would otherwise have had the chance to flee the city
@@AlexBarrGameDevEveryone that didn't eat the grain, would have been killed by people that did eat the grain though. The fact there are people in the cinematic only proves that the Culling saved lives of the people that weren't infected
@@AlexBarrGameDev Actually, you can say that it was for the greater good. If the plagued citizens from Stratholme got out of the city, it would have been much worse for the kingdom at the time.
Nevermind that Arthas would eventually come back and lead the Cult of the Damned; but at that moment, after Stratholme was culled, the kingdom of Lordaeron was free of the undead scourge and it's cult.
Mal'ganis always was going to try to corrupt Arthas, but in all respects, the Cult of the Damned it's hold on Lordaeron because of Arthas and what he did.
Sometimes, the only good choice is evil. That's life. Stratholme was the correct choice. An entire town worth of undead is another ARMY of undead. Removing that from the playing field is a strategic necessity to win the war.
The incorrect choice was not taking the five minutes on horseback to explain the issue to Uther and Jaina. You can ride and talk at the same time. Speaking from experience here.
arthas should have been redeemed if shadowlands needs to be rewritten and fixed.
I feel like the whole "killing the people of Stratholme would have done nothing, the Devs themselves said so" is a bad argument, because how would Arthas know that? As far as he could tell, killing someone and burning their corpse would ensure that they would not feed the Scourge more strength.
I'm not saying this to justify Arthas' actions, he still did terrible things, but the only truly morally evil thing I can think off the top of my head was burning the ships at Northrend and blaming it on the mercenaries he himself hired. I'm probably missing a lot of stuff, it's been ages since I last played WC3.
Most of the people in the city weren't plagued if we go by modern lore to the point of Arthas feeling relief once the people in Stratholme start fighting back against his men, if we go by Warcraft 3 lore, well. Most people weren't infected either and the following cinematic shows a lot of Stratholme's survivors burning the city and their own dead. So he didn't even burn the dead of Stratholme, he left them to rot in the streets so he could travel to Northrend.
@@DominionSorcererAnd yet every single building you destroy has people that will turn in 3 seconds inside it. The city was going to die. The difference is the culling resulted in the scourge having to lose their forces to try to get these and they haven't been successful at gaining as much ghouls as they hoped. It also stopped them from being able to parade into the next city. And spreading the infection there. I really don't see much difference between the culling mission and literally every zombie movie out there
@@RancorSnp That was the thing alot of people say shut the gates contact dalaran and the king take time to have a get together, devise a plan and think on it. As if Stratholme only had 1 entrance, it had 3-4 entrances and two of them were controlled by Mal'Ganis. So shutting the two gates and leaving the 2 Mal'Ganis had open, would have just escalated the undead population.
Had they waited for Dalaran archmages to decide and contest if they should infact take a look into stratholme or not intervene. The king had to contest with his advisors and the nobles about their input and if they think the story is true or not or if Arthas is just being a immature spoiled prince stomping about to try and play hero. It could have potentially took days for Dalaran to decide their choice, and the advisors/nobles would take weeks because they never seen anyone undead walking around or skeletons? They would need some kind of "proof" like a "live" zombie or ghoul but it could just be a person arthas hired to pretend to be a so called "zombie."
Meanwhile, Mal'Ganis is prancing around Stratholme increasing his army by turning household by household, while Arthas, Uther, and Jaina wait for a message on the verdict if either of these two forces have made a decision or not. Once everyone finally gives their verdict on assisting or not, they come up with a viable plan to save the unplagued villagers from the undead, only to open the gates once more and the whole city is undead. Then Ma'Ganis would just have to tell arthas he's going to northerend follow him, or stay behind to deal with the massive undead army that is Stratholme because your indecisions caused a much bigger dilemma.
i wish i could only be judged for my intentions and not the shitty outcomes throughout my life 😂
Oh man, we’d be saints!
Bringing up the level designer is problematic, because the guy made a video where he compares the Scourge to real-life diseases, and how we don't wipe entire cities because of a virus. This is already kind of suspicious.
Just how can he compare an irl disease to a fantasy undead curse? The way he backs up his sentence is questionable at the least, I don't think anyone would disagree.
On the Stratholme mission, some people may disagree with Arthas about his decision, but then they would do no better than Uther and Jaina. Arthas was reckless, but it won't change the fact that Uther wasn't really interested to hear his reasoning either. As his elder and teacher, Uther shouldn't have abandoned Arthas because of his hot-headed behaviour, and should have tried to understand what made his pupil come to this conclusion. The problem is, Uther and Jaina really just abandon him for no other reason than "there must be another way", they didn't really wish to cooperate as far as we can tell from their lines. Its like if Uther just got offended by the way Arthas talked to him, which might fit another character, but not an old and wise mentor.
While Arthas is quite overzealous, he really makes the only good decision regarding the city, based on his own knowledge (which is also right). The campaign before the Culling of Stratholme isn't long either, so its not like we missed a great detail. We only see these undead being relentless, large in numbers, and extremely dangerous. Even if there was a way to heal the sick, there was no way for them to find out.
When people try to defy that cleansing Stratholme was the bad decision, they don't want to look at it from both perspectives. And I also think they forget how Uther and Jaina just backed up from Arthas the moment he needed them the most. Shouldn't friends and mentors help you when you are about to make a reckless decision, when you aren't in a clear state of mind? Just a question.
While he is an adult person, and completely responsible of his own actions, Arthas's downfall is not just his mistake alone :D
Then he becomes obsessed with Mal'Ganis, and this is when Arthas truly begins to make wrong decisions. Like disobeying his father's order, and burning down the ships. And after that, ordering his men to kill the "monsters" we hire as mercenaries, in order to avoid losing their loyalty.
Then when Muradin confronts him about this, he just dismisses him. When they find the Frostmourne, Arthas just surrenders himself to revenge and takes up the Frostmourne.
These are his only evil decisions, and no one could possibly prove that they weren't a cause of Arthas's weakness.
After this, we clearly know that Death Knight Arthas is a different person. In the cutscene after the last mission of the human campaign, the following is written: "Tormented by Frostmourne's maddening voice, Arthas lost the last vestiges of his sanity" and "Now, driven by the sword's dark will, Arthas plans to return home to Lordaeron and claim his just reward..."
Even the story tells us that he went insane, and his original self is not in control anymore. There is no questioning this, as its stated in the game.
Overall, I think saying that Arthas did nothing wrong isn't right, but many of the points both Hirumaredx and you bring up, don't cover the full picture. I wonder if either of you at least replayed or watched the campaign in Warcraft 3 to back up your points. Which would be important since, you know, its the original source :D
Comparing it to an IRL virus may not be a 1:1 comparison to a magical plague but it’s the closest thing we have to compare - especially if we look at older plagues of our own like the Black Death which killed half of Europe, or even how leperacy was handled. there could hypothetically be some kind of disease that could turn people zombie-like and trying to figure out how to deal with that does it really matter if the cause is magical or biological? Still, I think it would be unfair to compare it to how we treat viruses as a modern society, but rather compare it to how a real world medieval society would have handled it.
As for uther and jaina, yeah they made some mistakes. Uther didn’t handle the situation well at all and he is responsible to a certain degree for Arthas’ fall. But it’s not unreasonable for their reaction - in the same sense that even though the best way to defeat the scourge was for the humans to head to kalimdor, who in their right mind would have listened to medivh, some random madman saying the whole human society has to get up to leave and head to some forgotten continent across the sea. Uther and jaina reacted poorly because they didn’t have the information Arthas had and he sounded unhinged from that view point. Everybody says “well Arthas didn’t have time” to explain the whole situation but is that really true? How long would it actually have taken to explain the situation to uther - 5 minutes? Maybe 10? And had he explained the situation, putting the question on uther “what should we do” would uther come to an entirely different decision? It may have varied slightly like “don’t kill citizens before they turn” but he probably would have seen the logic and helped Arthas out. And what military operation doesn’t have a briefing before engaging in a significant operation as that mission is.
Saying “you’d do no better” is probably true, but it’s really irrelevant when we are analyzing the best course of action, particularly if you are making the case that what happened was the ONLY course of action.
I wont argue with the point on frostmourne. But pre frostmourn, Arthas has consistent behaviour- acting rashly out of anger, ignoring his friends and mentors and that includes the culling. Had he taken the time to slow down, assess the situation and confer with uther and jaina they could either have come up with a better solution, or maybe even realize that their wasn’t a better one, but at least in that case they’d have gone into the city together and that could’ve made the difference when it comes to Arthas’ turn to becoming a death knight
@@AlexBarrGameDev I think its even worse in his case, because the level designer didn't even go deeper into it. He just said that if someone doesn't see it like he does, they should seek medical help :DD
Well, comparing Arthas to a random nobody isn't right either. Nobody had any idea who even was this person, is there a truth to anything he says? They had no idea. At least with Arthas, they know him and that he wasn't a mad man
I would say Arthas did nothing wrong...until Northrend. At which point he did pretty much everything wrong.
The Culling of Stratholme was MORALLY wrong at first glance... but when you think about it, would you rather turn into a zombie, or be killed before it happen? Assuming it was 100% going to happen (which it was). It was also strategically the right call.
The whole "corpses become abominations so killing the people means nothing" thing is absolutely ridiculous.
1- If you kill them before they become undead, it's a mercy in addition to reducing the risks of death for your soldiers.
2- If you destroy the corpses, they can't be turned into anything. At all.
What do you think would have been a better alternative to the Culling?
Also, the whole horse thing? That was in the novel, which was written AFTER Warcraft 3 and therefore neither players nor mission designers had any inklings of that "foreshadowing", making it not foreshadowing at all, really. You can't foreshadow in a prequel.
Medivh said Lordaeron was lost, not the whole Eastern Kingdom. The reason for going to Kalimdor was to fight the Burning Legion.
I agree with the rest of your video.
That was my initial logic too when I first played the game. But when you beat the mission you see a cinematic where villagers are burning bodies... which means SOME of the villagers were not plagued, which means technically the only moral way to approach the scenario is to wait for them to turn into zombies. But there are definitely counter arguments to be made still, its a fascinating question
@@AlexBarrGameDev The biggest counter argument to this is, if you wait for them to turn in to zombies not only are they going to be dead anyways but there is a greater then zero chance you would lose men in killing the zombies and such after they turn. So on a pure numeric morality it was the objective thing to do.
@@John-ve4gm Well that’s the best argument I’ve heard yet for that side of the argument. I’m still of the opinion that going into stratholme was the wrong move in the first place regardless of which strategy you use, but since the mission is in stratholme, I’ll definitely be considering this argument
Yeah I don't think there's a perfect answer.
It all boils down to Arthas acting like a general or king-to-be and not like a paladin.
Maybe Arthas' morality would have been less screwed without the culling, but the city itself was screwed anyway.
We also don't know for sure if the people burning the dead were locals (unless they say so, I don't remember). They could have come from a nearby town to help clean up.
"What do you think would have been a better alternative to the Culling?"
Quarantine: Close the doors of the city and send the army to kill just the zombies, cause protecting people and killing monsters is their job, they know the risks and they are trained for that*, put the non-infected in a safe place separating them from the infected ones.
In this context a question like "What's better to be turned into a zombie or to be killed by a soldier?" is a known model called "The False Dilemma". It's a kind of mental trap where one must necessarily choose A or B as the only alternatives, when actually there's also C, or a mix of them.
So of course if there's not a cure someone have to die but, infected people are still people and have free will, the final decision about their life is up to them, and them only, not Arthas.
*Reality: "Ok guys you all now the mechanics right? Yea...WUT?! OMG n00b dnot stand in teh fire!!!!!11 Oh, it wasn't me, it's healer fault!!1 REmOve pet! AWW Sheeit AGGRROOOO!!!11one" ;)
I think the biggest example I have of this is Kerrigan. She is an absolutely terrible monster. Killed billions, got cleansed, killed billions again. Women, children, puppies and kittens, ripped apart and eaten alive by horrible creatures that most would view as demonic. Creatures she sent to the task with full knowledge of what she was doing, again and again.
Yet I've met people who think she's a relatable 'good guy'. Quite a few, actually, and weirdly they've all been women. It's so disturbing.
That said though, where Kerrigan and Arthas differ *is* intent. Arthas wasn't a good guy by any means, but intent matters so much in reality that it is hard coded into law when dispensing with sentencing. What he hoped to accomplish, what repercussions he caused willingly, how much control he had, the duress, all of it matters to such a degree that culture has come to accept them as mitigating factors that can even have somebody found innocent.
Legally, he might have had most of his 'evil acts' barely punished.
I'll say you're being disingenuous about the plagued grain. Those people were absolutely screwed. Trying to then claim that dead bodies can be made into abominations is also ridiculous as that involves surgery and work, additional energies, and can be done even if they let the people turn to zombies. There is also the peace of death argument where it is considered immoral to allow somebody to survive only to suffer. Timmy dying right before becoming undead was certainly a more compassionate fate than having him turn, for example.
Kerrigan is so shittily written she practically ruined Starcraft 2 story all by herself
To be fair, Kerrigan was under complete control of the Overmind for the first one (Mengsk's fault), and the second time was directed at The Dominion, which while there was a great deal of collateral damage, was something that needed to be done. She has a lot of blood on her hands, but is still a good guy.
Oh yeah, and I guess she became a god and saved the universe or something too.
@@micahlehrke9 You have to understand that Kerrigan even before being infested was a ghost, which in the lore is the equivalent of a sanctioned assassin.
Then once she became enthralled by the Overmind, I need to remind you that she broke free of it long before she was cleansed. You can argue she was 'tainted', but the whole reason for her being created was to be independent of the Overmind's full control. She then... kept genociding, as she saw herself as Zerg.
Once cleansed, she was a human with some odd cartilage and such. As soon as she had the opportunity, she took control of Zerg and started going back to her old ways. As soon as she had the opportunity, she sent them at planets covered in civilians to delete the worlds. She didn't give any orders to prevent collateral damage, or oversee these events. This isn't the same as bombing a military installation in a country. This is extermination of a civilization that was mostly civilians, and culling of all the wildlife.
Think of it this way: if in the cinematic, a puppy was in the way of Mengsk just being inconvenient, and she kicked it out a window to its death, through shattered glass, yowling in fear, would you call her a bitch? Evil?
Now imagine that culling of the inconvenient on a scale which extends to babies, pregnant women, endangered species (or likely, the only of their kind only on said planet), entire ecosystems, ripped apart because she didn't want to give any nuanced orders or oversight to queens.
If you really think an ex-ghost and perhaps the most powerful psionic in the three factions couldn't kill Mengsk without culling people, you're insane. She absolutely did not have to wipe out his forces. She didn't need to wipe out his fringe planets and cull them. She absolutely could have assassinated him. She wanted to kill. In spite.
8:52 - yeah Uther and Muradin tried to reason with him, especially Muradin. But not only because of his anger he didn't listen to them but also because of his arrogance and pride
"Then your choice is already made. Just remember, the harder you strive to slay your enemies, the faster you'll deliver your people right into their hands."
-Medivh, the last guardian
I wouldn't have trusted Medivh either.
Just a note, not to detract from the video itself but the video "Arthas Did Nothing Wrong" was an April Fools Joke. To take the premise and try to portray it in a way people would agree with despite the contrary being the case. Similar to how he made a "Garrosh Did Nothing Wrong" for an April Fools Joke several years prior.
Oh wow, thanks for the heads up! That definitely clears things up - BUT the only reason I found the video in the first place was because quite a few people in my last warcraft video were arguing a lot of the points in the “Arthas did nothing wrong” video.
Completely understandable, the way the videos are made are to try present the information in such a one-sided yet reasonable to convince people that's the truth of the matter. Which I imagine would fly over a lot of peoples heads! I mean the Garrosh one still has me on his side, despite knowing that its active propaganda and uses music/speeches in the background to make me see him as a tragic-hero figure.
@@Macintosh2115 wow, that’s brilliant! I’ll have to check that one out
@@Macintosh2115 and it did convince asmon at the time
And now people use those concepts non ironically
I'm curious what would've happened if Uther and Jaina went to Northrend with him instead of just abandoning him. Could they have talked him out of taking frostmourne?
Jaina actually got stuck in the Emeral Nightmare where that happened and it ended with Jaina convincing Arthas not to take Frostmourne but then Mal Ganis killed him and she took forstmounre instead
They would have died there with Muradin, or barely escape with their lives
@@jwilleseries7764eh that one is iffy considering it is Jainas nightmare how things would go wrong diferently. It is a nightmare not vision of altrenate timeline, it has as much validity as those nightmare instances at BFA end.
I disagree with Designer Dave.
What is the point of showing us the humans who have eaten the infected grain transforming into undead in a prior mission if the exact same thing wasn’t going to happen?
After you eat the grain, you are on a ticking clock, soon you will die and then revive. A whole city doing that at once would be disastrous. Would it not?
(Also, arn’t Abominations corpses sewn together? They need to be created. They don’t just form).
Yup, in fact it’s so disastrous that it’s effectively a lost cause to try to save the city (I think that’s the point designer Dave is making), that you’d be so overwhelmed that killing villagers would only bolster the undead forces quicker
And yeah abominations are sewn together
Hmm 🤔.
He said that every indication is that killing the villages will accomplish nothing. I assumed the way that the civilians would be… culled, would stop them from turning. Eg. Decapitation and burned, judging from all the fire.
Do I think Arthas culled the city to combat egos with Mal’Ganis. No, I think that’s more of the mission design. I think he did it to contain the (soon to be) undead outbreak.
I think it’s an unbelievably hard choice; and I think he stopped the undead from spilling into Lordaeron much faster.
I don’t think you could do it and stay sane though. I think it broke him. He was already going a bit crazy lol.
@@KMBPapaRevenant from reading the comments on DesignerDave’s video my understanding is that yes, at the very least burning would do the trick - but the only reason we see that being done is that once arthas was corrupted (or psychologically damaged enough) the undead left, because getting at arthas was the real goal.
You’re absolutely right about the level design, in fact the only reason I made this video is because I made a video on that very point you brought up but in that video I assumed we were all on the same page with arthas in the culling mission but saw arthas turn evil after. And I got a whole bunch of people saying arthas did nothing wrong which led to this video
And again, you’re right. This mission has no ideal outcome. The point I’m guessing we probably differ on is what the best of the choices he had available to him. I think there were probably ways to deal with stratholme that would have been better but I also think that abandoning the city might have been the best move, and that probably would have been mentally traumatizing to Arthas as well
The Timmy ghoul is an easter egg so I don't think it can be used as an argument.
well pandaren were an easter egg at one time...But seriously there is possibly an argument for the scourge being a little bit more autonomous at this early stage before the Lich King had become very powerful and the cult of the damned was only a minor presence. Sylvanas broke off Arthas' control quite quickly (yes Arthas was weakened at that point but the LK was also weakened) and this is much later that Statholme. That said no one wants to become scourge according to Forsaken, so it is definitely a mercy to kill people before they turn.
@@thescarletpumpernel3305 In my head cannon, Pandaren still are an easter egg - no pandas in wotlk classic :)
5:11 purging the city changes a lot. After malganis ran away, the soldiers of lorderon collected the corpses and burned them so the acolytes couldnt retrive them and make them into abominations.
Exactly! It's like Dave didn't understand the story he himself wrote.
Soldiers of Lordaeron didn't collect the corpses and burned them, it was the people of Stratholme who survived the culling because Arthas wasn't very thorough.
@@DominionSorcerer
So what? No undead rose from Stratholme, after he left. Because they don't just do that on their own.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel idk maybe it was a reforged thing where jaina was walking into stratholme as medivh comes to her and talkes about leading her people to kalimdor while there where burning piles of corpses in the background next to ruins of houses.
@@DioBrando-qi9so
Well, yeah, zombies and infected leave behind corpses, too.
5:10
That's actually an interesting way of looking at it. Since we have cutscene in the end of that mission, where surviving humans burn their dead, i thought it actually made the difference, while Dave states that in the end those corpses too, will fuel the Scourge.
I'm not sure how these two points correlate.
The prophet does come along and say "the dead in this land may lie still for the time being, but don't be fooled, your young prince will find only death in the cold north", so it's probably alluding to that.
Well, that's why Dave is a level designer and not a writer.
Even if they had been alive, by the time the Scourge arrived to destroy the entire kingdom, they would all become undead, sooner or later. If anything, Arthas' assault caused more of them to be burned than they would be, otherwise.
the arthas did nothing wrong video was an april fools joke from hiru lol, but great vid too
Sorry, I think you and even the creator are wrong about the culling. Arthas purges stratholme and *prevents it from becoming an undead stronghold*. "The culling of stratholme does nothing!" Yes it did! What on earth are you talking about? Stratholme doesn't fall to the scourge until after the return of Arthas as a Death Knight and with him the reactivation of the scourge and the cult of the damned...
Yeah but you just proved my point didn’t you? Stratholme does fall, it just takes a little longer. It was a trap, there was no winning. The only reason the undead left in the first place was because they corrupted Arthas (or got under his skin to the point he was willing to chase Mal’Ganis to Northrend). Once they achieved that they didn’t need to conquer Stratholme right away so they left. They probably would have annihilated stratholme then and there if Arthas hadn’t intervened - so in that sense yeah he saved the city but he had started down the path that led to its destruction anyway, so there was no winning no matter what choice he made
Arthas purged Stratholme, but he didn't even kill all of the people who lived there. He didn't burn any bodies, he didn't do anything but kill innocent people - some of whom were no doubt already infected, but far from all were, and got goaded into chasing Mal'ganis to Northrend.
@@AlexBarrGameDev
I don't think we can use the actual outcomes of events to justify the morality of the decisions made. Arthas isn't clairvoyant and can't be expected to know the eventual fate of Straholme. He does however have a wealth of information that indicates that if he does nothing all of Stratholme will almost certainly be converted into undead ghouls and rounded up by Mal'Ganis providing him a large increase in his forces to aid him in destroying the planet. I don't think his decision here is the best, I agree that he probably could have confronted the threat and retained his allies. I don't however think his decision here is evil either, you've mentioned before you feel the culling is immoral because it violates the free will of those people culled but that disregards the likely countless more people who will be unwillingly killed by the thousands of ghouls either swarming across the landscape or following Mal'Ganis. Ultimately Arthas appears to view the entire situation of a trolley problem, where he can switch the tracks to kill the comparatively fewer people in Straholme than will die in the runaway disaster that otherwise occurs. Personally I feel the reason Arthas is an immoral tragic hero is because he pushes away all of his peers (friends, mentors, family & love interest alike) and is driven to take up a cursed relic that hastens and continues a path he was seemingly already on.
@@cameronbreeze4029 I absolutely agree with your final reasoning there, I too think that his immortality is essentially centred around his relationships. But that’s one of the reasons why I think the way he handled stratholme is immoral - because yeah it is essentially a trolley problem, and had other things been handled differently I could very easily find myself saying that he did the right thing, but he significantly handicapped himself by pushing away uther and jaina and like the person that commented before you said he didn’t even finish culling the city, something I hadn’t even considered. He is in a race to get to 100 citizens culled with Mal’Ganis but once that amount is reached he just leaves and follow Mal’Ganis. All his decisions seem to be split decisions based on anger without properly thinking things through.
@@AlexBarrGameDev
I think you're interpreting the objective a bit too literally there, sure he leaves before the burning is done but I think the idea that he kills x number of citizens then declares victory and gallops off is a bit too absurd to take as literal. I figure he finishes his purge without letting Mal'Ganis gain too many followers and moves. I'll also say I do feel quite strongly they had to enter the city based on the information they had but I 100% agree that he does the worst version of that and basically doesn't even try to get a better outcome. Thanks for the response, I appreciate the time and thought you've put into the topic and it was a fun video.
1:40 - like Obi wan said to Anakin you've become the very thing you swore to destroy
The culling broke Uther tbh, not Arthas, more as a character than as a person (he just show he hypocrisy incarnated, pretty good representation of a church man)
The culling was necessary, Uther knew it and this is why he didnt even try to stop it, he was OK with the killing of innocents as long as he wasnt the one with blood on his hand
Obv this also broke Arthas but imo if Uther wouldnt have ""betrayed"" him, arthas would have not fall
No it wasn't. Firstly look at the end result. No one was actually saved. An entire city burned, Arthas became corrupt, and destroyed the entire kingdom. That's the results of stratholme.
Arthas could've tried other things, he could've tried to quarantine to find a cure with dalaran. And even if it was doomed, the simple act of trying something but a violent solution would've altered his path. Because he wouldn't have been in a position for the dreadlord to trick. And would've had enough good friends and support to know better than to chase him anyways. Which would've likely saved a lot of lives. Arthas HAD choices. He simply chose the worst ones.
*looks at wow* oh yeah the culling totally kept stratholme a safe place alright
@@MikePhantom It did, until the scourge arrived. WoW literally has lore about when it was attacked, meaning it survived thanks to Arthas and could put up a fight against the Scourge, even if it was pointless.
Yeah doubt Uther wanted the culling to happen, If it was up to him he would have tried saving Stratholme. He would fail, possibly even dying and condemning Lordaeron sooner, but he would try, he was that kind of paladin according to lore. The "church man" archetype you are describing didn't really exist in the warcraft lore untill the Scarlet crusade I believe.
"He was never trying to do the wrong thing"
Just because he wan't trying to, (Which he absolutely was at certain points in the story, you know, the whole hiring a bunch of mercenaries to defy his father's orders to go back to Lorderon, only to then betray and kill them once their job was done.) doesn't mean HE DIDN'T do anything wrong. Because he did, and we see him doing things wrong even BEFORE he so much as touches Frostmourne.
I present a line from Dr. Allen Grant, in Jurassic Park 3: "some of the worst things IMAGINABLE we're done with the best intentions". ZUKO is someone who truly was a character worth defending, even regardless of the bad things he did. Part of the reason is because he HIMSELF eventually saw that he was doing bad things in service to a bad person, and he actively chose to not give in to becoming the person who tried to force him to be that kind of person. Arthas, regardless of his intentions, lost sight of what was right in his anger and hatred of Mal'Ganis. Acts based in hatred are inherently hateful and wrong, as evidenced by the light abandoning him. That was the whole reason his desire to find Frostmourne was even solidified. He could no longer call upon the lights power, and without it he didn't believe he was strong enough to kill Mal'Ganis
Just one thing. That totally sort of ruins the argument in this case. Yes, they could’ve been raised into abominations and other foul beings. But, how about we just burn the bodies? Which isn’t that what he did anyway? then the necromancer’s wouldn’t have anything to work with except ashes.
Never mind. Read the comments so they do burn them. So either way, they put a reasonable dent in the undead army. I say reasonable. Not big.
Arthas didn't burn any bodies, the survivors of the culling had to burn their own dead.
I've had quite a discussion with Dave on this topic. Despite my respect for the man, I can't say I loved that.
I still consider that the different interpretations should be allowed, because the game is really scarce on details. The dialogues and cutscenes omit a lot of what would really be said and done in reality. Take Arthas' dialogue with Uther just before Stratholme: he didn't give Uther any arguments, and the whole discussion considering Culling is just 3 sentences or so. Dave confirms that it's meant to be a characterization of Arthas. But every dialogue in the game is like that, they are always extremely brief, and people just understand everything from very brief explanations. How can we possibly know where it's characterization and where it's omission? We can't.
And when events happen in the game, it's impossible to know which part of what's shown on the screen is canon and which is just game mechanics.
For example, during the culling we see that people are basically turning into zombies before Arthas' very eyes. Moreover, we never see him killing any uninfected person. I know that is not canon, because I spoke to Dave. But that's what happens in the game, and if those actions are to be judged immoral, then every protagonist of a zombie apocalypse story is a terrible person. Moreover, we see surviving villagers burning zombie corpses in the following cutscene, which might mean either him doing a bad job culling, or sparing the uninfected people. Again, the canon is that Arthas did a bad job culling, and the plague didn't activate because Mal'Ganis wasn't there. But it's never stated in the game. It might as well mean he evacuated all the people who weren't infected.
Did Arthas commit evil actions? Sure. The mercenary episode is very clear about that. Not the Culling, though.
What Dave said also didn't really make any sense.
Like, the culling 100% worked. If you didn't kill the civilian, they turned into zombies within literal seconds and then joined the evil horde in forcefully infecting others.
And dead bodies become abominations? On their own? Just like that? Where is he getting this from? There is literally nothing in the lore which supports this. Abominations have to be literally stitched together, that's why they look like that! And skeletons have to be raised by necromancers. Unlike the infected zombies, they don't create themselves on their own. Nor do we see this happening in the mission or afterwards.
And when Arthas is done, the Dreadlord literally retreats, defeated and the city survives, even with so many dead. If Arthas hadn't intervened, there is a good chance that the Dreadlord and his army of already infected villagers would have gone on to kill everyone. If anything, Uthor and Jaina did the worst thing in this situation: they literally just... left! Leaving the city to its own devices. They didn't stick around. Or at least tried to keep the Dreadlord from infecting more people. They just went away!
None of what DesignerDave says matches with how the mission works out. I feel like DesignerDave just realized that he had created a situation where killing innocent people was the only option and tried to wriggle out of that moral complexity with completely nonsensical mental gymnastics.
"Some may question your right to destroy ten billion people (read Stratholme). Those who understand know that you have no right to let them live." - Exterminatus Extremis
I could chalk Stratholme up as one of those tough decision leaders have to make. However, it is clear that Arthas has gone off the rails by the time he reaches Northrend. Arthas had good intentions, but that doesn't mean you are good person. Once he was willing to compromise all his principles to accomplish his goals, he had no principles. It is a classic case of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
i completely disagree on he was "tricked" into picking up frostmorne narrative both in-game warcraft 3 Muradin and The Guardian actually warned him that blade was cursed and evil.
Arthas completely ignored their warnings and took the blade anyway because of his desire for revenge on Mal'ganis and damn all the consequences. nobody forced him or gave him misdirected info on picking the blade. Ner'zhul has ability to foresee the future events and told Mal'gains Arthas would in fact chooses to take frostmorne and sacrifice Muradin.
The biggest issue with Arthas was: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. There were no good choices for him to make. All roads went to tragedy.
One must also remember, Arthas was the first soul Frostmourne claimed. He was the first victim. The Arthas, wielder of the blade, was NOT the same Arthas prior.
But even as the Lich King, Arthas did show the restraint of his former self. Had he not, the second Scourge invasion would NOT have been stopped.
It HAS to remembered that Arthas became corrupted by the darkness of Death itself. There really was no coming back from that. It's like Sylvanas, she became something different.
With the power Arthas, as the Lich King, possessed, he could have easily regained dominance of the Forsaken as well. How could he not, is the true question.
Arthas unquestionably and easily defeated (and would've killed the cowardly) Illidan even as Arthas' powerful was drastically waning as a DeathKnight.
I will not absolve Arthas of his foolishness but he wasn't a completely bad guy. He was misguided and inexperienced. He made terrible decisions but he wasn't purely evil.
He had a heart. Even a counter-part of himself aids you in trying to defeat him. Even Uther (before shit retcon) forgave him and chose to remember him as the hero he was once.
Let us also not forget. Arthas won the Raid battle. We, the champions, lost. If it weren't for the Holy Light itself surging through a great Paladin, the Lich King would have won it all.
The only time in the entire game of WoW where the End-Game Raid Boss was actually too powerful to defeat. The strongest entity to ever grace our worlds.
Arthas did indeed do some things wrong; I can't deny. One also must remember that the 'road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. One must act with reason and logic, not emotion.
You can blame Arthas for his decisions pre-Frostmourne. After Frostmourne, Arthas became something else and it's a LOT harder say one way or another on anything.
Lastly, another thing to not be forgotten, is that the Dreadlords are able to do some nasty things when it comes to mind/heart manipulation.
If we take into account what a Dreadlord is capable of doing to a human, it may be harder to blame Arthas for his pre-Frostmourne decisions. Mal'Ganis could've done a lot.
Arthas is probably a good example of the rare occasion of a 'good' person doing bad things. Usually it's just bad people doing bad things, or that's at least how I've come to see life.
There's a bit more nuance to what I'm trying to say there but I don't know a better way to say it. Kind of like when socialists murder dissidents, deep down, they know they're the bad guys.
All in all... I don't care, I love Arthas and I'm team Scourge! Kill the living, raise the dead!
Honestly that ending for a raid-boss was a highlight of WoW the only time when Death won but just in a split second loses, no real raid bosses ever went to that extent again where evil won unless some holy power acts to save the moment. N'Zoth? we snap out of our mind control and Kamehameha him to death, Jailer becoming whole again? well we were too busy fighting sylvanas to really care what he was doing the entire time. Warlords we fight Archimonde... again?
I'm an Rp'er on World of Warcraft... and I once considered creating a character that was apart of the Culling proper. Part of that process was coming up with justifications for why someone would go along with this, despite how morally wrong slaughtering innocent people normally is.
It helps if you consider the wider problems that the Scourge outbreak had inflicted on the Kingdom, even before one gets to Stratholme. Lordaeron was not in a good position going forward. The Cult of the Damned was largely made up of serfs and farmers from the 'Breadbasket' of the kingdom and the Scourge largely built up its numbers for the original army that Arthas and Co defeated before they reached Stratholme by wiping out those same farming communities, alongside using Andorhal (which was at the center of the food production and distribution) to infect larger settlements that might have been able to endure actual attacks. The Scourge also blighted a great deal of these farmlands in the process; Maybe not to the extent that the Plaguelands would become known by, but still pretty bad. On top of this, existing grain stockpiles are going to have to be inspected and chunks destroyed because of it being a primary method of spreading the plague.
No matter what happened, famine and (more mundane) plagues were going to ran rampant across Lorderan in the aftermath of this. Both of which bring additional death. If Stratholme was allowed to become a Scourge bastion with a brand new army of undead in the midst of this, marching fresh forces across ravaged and blighted parts of the kingdom later is going to be a logistical nightmare at best, provided that what few settlements that have survived up to this point continue to do so. This is a problem, because with Lordaeron about to enter a weakened state due to the aforementioned famine (and all the nasty stuff that comes with famine), with the Scourge actively putting continued pressure from a stronghold that can't be easily assaulted by the living due to its defenses and the blight against the land itself that makes resupply or living off the land next to impossible... It would be a war of attrition that favored the Scourge heavily.
Purging Stratholme and preventing that bastion and army from forming was pretty much the only real chance Lordaeron had of surviving long enough to recover. Yes, the remaining pockets of Scourge and Cult of the Damned necromancers would need to be hunted down, but by comparison that's just hunting down stragglers. As tragic as it was, there wasn't a lot in the way of alternative options to dealing with the situation in Stratholme before the plague and the Scourge made even assaulting the place more of a horrific nightmare then it turned out to be. Despite Arthas' personal flaws, this was simply a shitty situation were doing nothing wasn't an option.
That's the thing because Arthas culled the city, while he was gone for several months in notherend before and after Mal'Ganis the undead crisis was no more in Lordaeron it wasn't until arthas came back with the scourge in tow did lordaeron fall. Had he done nothing and planned it out with his father, the nobles, the advisors, gave them the story and found some way to prove his claim of what was going on potentially wasting several weeks to prove this, stratholme would have already been lost. Arthas would then go after Mal'Ganis in northerend while lordaeron fell to the undead army of stratholme.
@@Darkness5423 There is an argument to be made that Arthas' decisions weren't wrong... it was just the manner in which he went about trying to implement them. Taking the time to properly explain the nature of the plague to Uther and the Knights of the Silver Hand present might not have gotten them on his side, but it would at least have given them the context of why he was considering the Cull.
"As a Paladin, slaying the population of this city before the plague can take them is abhorrent. As Prince of the kingdom, I have to act in the best interests of the Kingdom at large."
Despite my love for WotLK, it retcon-ed some things that's related to Arthas and Lich King merge into one being and everything that comes afterwards.
But the subsequent literature retcon-ed everything into oblivion, making Arthas the only personality of Lich-King, playing into that questline about LK carving out his heart and throwing it away.
Why i say "recon-ed into oblivion"? There's multiple clear indications that the Lich King is a merge between two entities.
Arthas' personality plays into want to remove everything that reminds him of his own human beginning, such as all living things and his heart - something that actually hurt him after the heart was destroyed by Fordring. Something that Ner'zhul would never do.
While Ner'zhul's part of the deal clearly shows by torturing Bolvar and placing him at the top of Frozen Throne - not just for the hell of it, but to keep a *replacement* close to the source in case things went south. And there was enough reasons to assume that since Arthas' side already cost both of them - being hit by Forsaken's plague, loosing Knights of Ebon Blade, getting weakened by destruction of his heart to Ashbringer.
Another example, from his dialogues it's clear that he's both Ner'zhul and Arthas at the same time. "I was the shaman once" is the direct quote - something that Arthas would never said.
Unfortunately, whatever the plans were for this storyline, it died after the Legion, where absolute morons took to the writing of this.
It's a shame, unfortunately bad writing seems to have become a trend the last few years. I never played past burning legion to be honest. I find Arthas's story fascinating, especially the merger with Ner'zhul - I figured that was the case while doing research for this video which is why I said I thought there seemed to be more of a difference between Death Knight Arthas and the Lich King then the difference between Arthas the paladin and Death Knight Arthas
@@AlexBarrGameDev I've played up to the legion and early BFA before Blizzard shit the bed hard with "it's a pvp expansion, but the first endboss of the first raid gonna be poor man's copy of Lady Vashj".
The quality between Legion's writing and everything that follows is honesly unbelievable.
And the Legion wasn't that good writing-wise - but it played into what was established - for example, Bolvar clearly stating that Ebon Blade is owned by him, and he will use you in the way he sees fit.
And and the same time Legion established Light as being not-so-friendly, Eonar as potentially being malevolent, and the vision that Sargeras in his madness saw about Dark Titan being born from the Old-Gods-Infested planet might POTENTIALLY be true.
Seeing how we just pwned Nzoth - not the still bound C'thun, not the barely starting to get freed Yogg-Saron, but FULLY FREED N'ZOTH
I just can't take this shit even remotely serious anymore. Not even gonna talk in-depth about how they turned Sylvanas into shit-eating Marry Sue.
I haven't done ICC, so I don't know if Arthas bad guy monologues about how the crusade to Northrend was part of his master plan or something, but this idea that Arthas was "holding back" seems ridiculous to me. The Pre-Patch event in WOW was a Scourge invasion of Azeroth using plagued grain again, as well as a formal invasion of parts of the world. Sending Naxxrammas to Northrend was a retreat of sorts from the EPL and it's crazy to think that Arthas would sacrifice Kel'Thuzad to test people. In fact in Naxx he outright calls for the PC's to be destroyed. Heck outside of Ice Crown and arguably Zul'Drek, you get the feeling like the Scourge are on the defensive, at best mounting counter-attacks.
By WOTLK, Arthas' power is waning, largely because the Alliance and Horde recovered, built up and had a new generation of champions take the place of old ones like Uther. His outposts in the Plaguelands were under constant assault by them as well as the Scarlet Crusade, and the Pre-Patch event was him attempting to regain some of that power.
he does monologue about his plan being to draw the best fighters to Northrend and trial them out before killing them and raising as his personal army - and he *does* succeed in killing us, but Tirion unlocks the anti-CC trait of the Ashbringer and shatters Frostmourne before he could raise us, and the ghost of Terenas II ressurrects us
"Yeah, so just because you could end the world and decide not to doesn't exactly make you a good person"
I was gonna rebut this but then I thought of the politicians with their nukes and I wouldn't describe them as good people just because they're not launching them either
Precisely.
The Culling damaged Arthas mind and soul, but no; It was NOT his first act of evil, and it was NOT a wrong decision.
When he got into the city, those people were already damned to become undead, and with Mal'ganis in the vicinity (and his necromancers), those undead would be controlled and would become a huge problem to the entire continent, and the undead plague would've overrun the continent.
"Ahh but Timmy!" - Ok, first, Timmy might either be a joke, and even if he is lore serious, Timmy is found without no necromancer around, dreadlord or any other greater undead controller, hence why he is friendly (more like neutral, since you cant use him). And we have FACTUAL PROOF that the events of The Culling are different, since any citizen that mal'ganis get to it first, becomes an ENEMY undead.
"But even killing them, they would have become undead either!" - Yeah, WEAKER undead, far far weaker. A ghoul can shred a normal soldier with ease while a skeleton can be dealt with less casualties.
...the nuremberg trials, really? Moving on!
The real first TRUE EVIL act of Arthas was when he burned his ships and killed the mercenaries. That was evil, and that was unnecessary. What do you think would it happen if The Culling had not happened?!!
You don't need to go out of Warcraft to find comparisons to Arthas path, as one thing most people forget about W3, is that it's a triple protagonists story, where each race (orcs, men and elves) have one "Arthas" and one "Uther". And although in the case of the orcs, the story lacks nuance (that eventually got overloaded with it in WoW), if you look at the elves you gonna see a perfect mirror of Arthas in the character of Illidan.
And they are mirrored on purpose, to show that "in extreme situations, you may need to do extreme things" and at the same time that "extremism is always the worst option"
Both Arthas and Illidan sacrificed a small fraction of their people to save their entire world, and got chastised by it, both sacrificed a part of themselves in what they thought it was the way to save themselves, both were lied to, both were manipulated by a higher being that twisted their mind.
Not only that, both are brazen, somewhat reckless warrior princes that, for different reasons, got to the same "only I am in a position to do what must be done" mentality.
But even though their paths were the same, step by step, whenever Arthas pushed to do greater acts in the name of good, he FAILED, he was wrong, where, whenever Illidan did the same thing, he succeeded.
And even though Illidan got his second chance and became an universe level saviour, I would argue that he was far evil in his journey than Arthas (pre-Frostmourne).
Up to the point where Arthas picked the cursed blade, he never did anything with the thought of glory he would gain by being his people's saviour, where Illidan was doing this at least 50% for the glory (and maybe a chance to impress Tyrande).
So in conclusion, I AGREE with the part that Arthas did A LOT of wrong things, BUT not everything he did was wrong.
And I also DISAGREE with the idea that his entire W3 journey was of an evil psychopathic man. Arthas WAS a good man, that did horrible things, THEN did EVIL things along the way, picked the top5 most cursed items in the universe and became completely deranged because of it (there's a small retcon on WoW that points to the idea that from the moment he picked the sword he had no control over his actions anymore, but this is not here or there, we all can agree that DEATHKNIGHT ARTHAS is evil, regardless of how much, by a little or entirely, the sword is controlling him).
The way I see it though, is even if Arthas is justified 100% in going into Stratholme and culling the citizens, its still the path that led to his destruction (of course, he can't know that ahead of time, granted) where as had he done anything else he wouldn't have been tempted by Mal'Ganis to go to Northrend.
Sure, by abandoning the city, the undead forces would be bolstered by a HUGE degree and that would be a serious challenge, but I would argue that that challenge would be easier to manage than the scourge led by Death Knight Arthas.
And as for the psychopath Arthas in WarCraft 3, I hope you're right, BUT if you look back at the game and picture yourself in 2002, there is no WoW, there are no books, you are playing the game for the first time. If all you have to go on is the WarCraft 3 campaign alone, then based on his behaviour, things aren't looking good for him. Some people argue that he was just a poorly written character that was fleshed out over time and became a much better character after the expansion, WoW and books.
10:17 - I think it's strange because they should have some experience, they should be trained how to deal with emotions by Jedi and Paladins
"Well done, Arthas. You did what the plague could not - purged the entire city. Do you feel like a hero yet?"
"Arthas did nothing wrong"
Mf literally picked up Frostmourne wym
At the end of Shadowlands I think the perfect ending would have been Anduin dropping a small soulstone quest item and it leads up to a area in the Shadowlands. When we get there the pure part of Arthas manifests and Invincible appears, he pets him and mounts him walking off into the distance and their remaining anima dissipates and they fade away.
Or they go balls deep and show that any humanity arthas shown was all a lie, and he was secretly always a monster. And that anyone who simped for him was tricked >:)
honestly during the cutscene with anduine, his father, and the orc (i forget his name) when their all holding Kingsmourne it would have been more badass to see arthas also reaching out to break it so he could finally be free of his torment while saying "you don't deserve the same fate i had..." before Kingsmourne shatters into his dads swords. It could have also had anduine having an internal talk with his father, while the soul of Arthas got to finally have the closure with Jaina before disappearing.
It just having sylvanas say "no one will remember your name ever." before whisking his soul away was very anti-climatic.
How have we not compared the queen of blades to arthus I think they have tons of parallels.
Oh it'll definitively happen
10:12 The thing is, Anakin as a Jedi has been trained to control his emotion. We see other Jedi not giving into their anger. It was Anakin's failing for not living up to his lessions, and ultimately this made him voulnareable to Palpatines manipulation.
Also he was blinded by greed, manifesting as his SELFISH love for Padmé, and other thing Palpatine could exploit. He wanted to save her not for Padmé's sake, but only for himself. On the other hand Luke's SELFLESS love managed to save his father and destroy the Sith because he was willing to sacrifice himself. Luke, opposed to Anakin learned to let go.
Edit: I accidentally said Luke was selfish, which he isn't by the time he saves his father.
Lukes SELFLESS* you mean?
@@CoNteMpTone OMG yes, thank you.
Imagine you wake up, you couldnt take breakfast from that new sweet grain that shipped into the town, and arthas comes and kill you with out really knowing what is going on.
Now imagine Arthas doesn't kill you. You go about your day not knowing a thing and suddenly oops your loved ones or neighbors that did eat that breakfast are man eating zombies who eat your flesh. None of these sound good. The difference is in the second scenario you and your loved ones dont just die you also become mindless puppets that will kill countless others. Must suck being a citizen of Lordaeron during Menethil times
After your family and neighbours would turn into zombies, they would have killed you anyway and turn you into a zombie as well. You were already dead and Arthas just saved your soul from suffering.
@@rafairacki9302 Did he though? Because I don't think "saving" and "brutally murdering after breaking and entering" are the same thing. I am not a lawyer, but if you tell the judge you broke into a man's house and clubbed him and his entire family to death to save them from being the undead, I suspect he will not be letting you go that day....Or anyday ever. Because it's still a brutal home invasion and murder.
@@NeiasaurusCreations Yes, let's apply modern laws and regulations to fantasy world where zombies exist :)
1. Majority of people in the city ate the grain and would turn into zombies.
2. After turning into zombies, they would kill the remaining survivors and turn them into zombies too.
3. Then they would spread outside of the city and turn the nearby villages etc.
3. Souls exist in Warcraft universe and it is said that they suffer while people are raised as undead.
He killed the people that would have been turned/killed by zombies to save their souls from suffering and to slow down/stop the spread of the plague.
Actually I would say that him "brutally murdering" people with weapons is a better way to die than to be eaten alive by zombies :)
@@rafairacki9302
You missed what I was saying. The real world laws are based off morals, morals we as a society have collectively upheld. Murder is not bad because it's illegal, you window licker. It's bad because the immorality of ending a person's life, taking their future away, and depriving their family of them, among other things.
1) Doesn't justify murder. Nor will murder improve the situation...It makes it drastically worse actually given we know what happens.
2) You \think\ that's what's going to happen. But what you or arthas think is also NOT justification for murder. A person that might grow up to be a serial killer simply can't be killed as a child as a precaution for their potential behavior later. The same applies here. Just because some might turn, and others might die from it, doesn't really justify killing EVERYONE without ANY discretion or attempt to figure whos infected or not.
3)Again, I refer to 2. Not that this point matters, since the plague spreads ANYWAYS even with the purging and Arthas ends up destroying the entire kingdom. And this event is the event that leads down that path, so is ultimately the event that causes way more deaths than anything.
4) He didn't do a very good job at saving anyone's soul. Given he become the lich king, dooms an entire kingdom, and spreads misery until he's finally put down in ICC. F for effort sport.
Simply put not only was Arthas' actions completely immoral, but also completely ineffective and the stupidest possible solution. It was an emotional choice made in the moment that would have MASSIVE negative consequence for the entire world. There is nothing 'good' or 'right' about his choice. The game literally makes this clear. That this was the moment he crossed the line and started his descent to villiany. And he made it all on his own, without being tricked or mind controlled. And it's one of the worst choices he makes. Showing that he was always the DK arthas deep down. The sword and LK just brought it out and nurtured what was always there. He's not so tragic in my eyes. Good intentions often make evil people.
Arthas is trained mostly to be an effective warrior (and he had the warrior mindset of wreck things first then ask later), so much he forgot that there are other ways to deal the undead problem in Lordaeron. For example, abandoning Lordaeron altogether. Might not be a good thing, but as Medivh predicted, the land was already lost even in the Scourge's earlier stages. Another option might be to ask Kirin Tor to mass-produce an antidote, or to ask the High Elves to do the same (or even have both the Kirin Tor and the High Elves do it together). Arthas forgets that as a prince, his number one job is to be skilled at asking people for help, and that war isn't the only thing that has to be in his mind.
Timmy undead having free will ?Just because he was made a neutral creep. Maybe designers felt is unfit to change kids into raging monsters at that point ? Or maybe he just needed "guidance" from KT or a Dread Lord, they are created via domination magic, so they need a dominating mind.
I think it is a huge difference between undead ghouls lets say and risen skeletons. If it wasn't any, why bother create the plague to turn them into undead in the first place ? you just needed them dead to raise, right ? Seeking for possible explanation while disregarding more obvious one is not building a strong case.
Lack of reasoning. Again, same simple yet wrong explaining. Why not judge all other characters at same time for doing nothing at all. Even Arthas's father takes the plague as a joke, a rumor. It is clearly shown in the cinematic at the start of the game. Since his father gives the direct orders, first to Uther, then when he recalls Northrend troops, yes, Arthas is indeed alone fighting in something nobody takes interest or understanding. Was he played ? Yes. Was the "mastermind" Mal'Ganis also played ? Yes, he was. Was he responsible for choosing as he did ? Yes. Yet, as the story was build, he had all circumstances from both side, from Mal'Ganis actions and from humans inaction.
Having self-control as death knight and how much of it is an assumption. Another bad bad story reading before making the video. The sword and the helm are NOT Legion artifacts. It is clearly revealed in Shadowlands, from what we know The Jailor might have been using LK for his own interest, using the Legion when he wanted, keeping it away when he didn't. You don't have to be sure of anything, again, even Uther's story is detailed in Shadowlands. Arthas' soul was first to be probably split. How exactly is not clearly stated. Also you can see with Bolvar, the new LK, that he clearly states that a huge effort was necessary to keep Jailor's influence on him apart.
Regarding why he didn't turn all world into undead, that is also explained in ICC storyline. Risen undead are just mindless, skill-less bodies. In order to fight the legion he needed the most powerful heroes turned into undead, to retain their power and augment it.
If you can't follow the story properly, please don't do videos on it, is.....useless effort....that could be better invested elsewhere.
The Timmy thing messed me up as a kid!
WHOA WHOA WHOA DUDE your COMPLETELY wrong about the culling. it IS needed because if Arthas did not purge the city your looking at an instant army of literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE at minimum according to the lore its the LARGEST CITY in their Kingdom. The size in game? miniturized beyond all belief. Even in WoW its pathetically tiny compared to the properly sized version and its still two complete dungeons. PLUS they leave out large chunks of it including the Harbor.
There is a reason why the Scarlet Crusade was never able to clear it out despite multiple attempts. If Arthas had not slaughtered EVERY LIVING BEING in the city Lordaeron the kingdom would have been wiped out within the month. It was a win win scenario for the demons that took MONTHS of planning. Either Arthas wipes out the city or the newly turned undead wipe out the kingdom.
Plus BEFORE you go into 'oh but necros can still just raise them from the corpses' THAT TAKES A TON OF TIME. Like for actually durable and useful undead that last more than a few minutes it takes an EXPERIENCED necromancer at least several seconds to animate them PER CORPSE. Thats at MINIMUM for a 200k pop city which is the lowest it could be with stated pop numbers is .6 DAYS of constant continues work on the part of 20 EXPERIENCED necromancers and thats if they work uninterrupted and the bodies are not burnt in fires like they did in cannon. PLUS those experienced Necromancers are at an EXTREME premium after Arthas and Uthers knights just SLAUGHTERED Kel'thuzad and most of his cult at least their higher up members in the previous missions.
So no dude Arthas made the only correct choice that he had availible with the information he had on him. Also you not knowing if the undead have free will? Thats tells me you NEVER played the Frozen throne and know NOTHING about its campaign. Also based on your previous video and your hatred of 'evil' campaigns you likely also never played the undead campaign or the other campaigns for that matter. If so then you never learned that the undead had 0 free will up until the Lich King started getting attacked by Illidean allowing some undead to go free creating the Forsaken. Yes he became evil later on but right up until he took up Frostmourne he was STILL more good than evil and would have been horrified if he knew of his future actions that his path would lead him to. Ultimatelly He was a good man that constantly was forced to choose between the lesser of two evils unable to turn from his path or realize that this was a game that he cant win by playing it and the best decision he had availible was not to play. He was in his early twenties too and taught his SOLE purpose for being alive was to defend and protect his people his entire life. Like that is his primairy duty as both a prince and a paladin.
So ya he lacked the wisdom to see that the path offered to him by Medhiv was the only path where he COULD save at least some of his people but given how he was raised and his youth there was 0 chance of him accepting such as an option especially from a seemingly crazy person. Maybe if he had a bit more experience sure but your talking about someone who was HAND SELECTED for this by every demon AND Nerzul for being the perfect choice to corrupt given his youth idealism and relative inexperience combining into the whole the path to hell is paved with good intentions and Arthas had the best of intentions and even made the correct choices the entire way through. the ONLY way he could have maybe been turned aside is if one of his friends stayed loyal and put up the option to cross the sea after Stratholme like say Jaina who actually does it later on. Part of why killing the city hurt him so much is that both his mentor and the woman he loved turned their backs on him completely WHILE he was making the correct choice.
agreed, like i said in other posts, if they took their time, analyzed the situation quarantined off the two entrances they controlled, while Mal'Ganis controlled all the other entrances. Mal'Ganis would have a field day in stratholme while arthas and pals are requesting/waiting for assistance from his father and the other nobles. Even if they waited a day or two and the king/nobles actually believed them and a day later sent their army. Dreadlords don't need sleep, you know how much damage/conversions Mal'Ganis could get done in 48, 72, or even 96 hours before the alliance finally came to stop him?
By this point the army would arrive and it wouldn't be to rescue/save villagers it'd be to try and halt the massive undead army coming from a walled off undead bastion.
So.
Arthas bad because Arthas burn city only to later turn bad and come back and undead the city.
How the hell is he supposed to know that?
Oh, yeah, he also murdered an entire city. Well, you can either murder an entire city and burn it's inhabitants' corpses or you can fuel the Scourge so it goes on with a new avalanche of zombies, killing and plaguing more people as they go, by the way, zombies suffer much more as zombies than when their bodies are burnt, Arthas ain't burning them alive or skinning people to boil them later
Arthas didn't burn the people he killed in Stratholme, he didn't kill everyone in Stratholme. The survivors had to burn their own dead.
@@DominionSorcerer Do you think that survivors would fate better agist horde of undead?
you guys know the true villain behind lich king is the yailer
ya won't even spell his name right, he deserves that
I saw another video that made a great point about Arthas in Quel'thalas. All he did to Sylvanas was personal. The objective of the lich king is to simply raise more undead. There was no need to, after killing and raising Sylvanas, to keep her self awareness, and torment her for an entire year. The lich king has no need for that. His genocide is dispassionate. He has no reason to just torment a person, and keep her body in an iron coffin to further torture her. That was personal. That was all Arthas. And the fact he kept her blood alongside all the trinkets of the people he hurt and betrayed is disturbing. It's like a serial killer keeping mementos of his victims. Arthas isn't redeemable. He is a monster
If you forget about morality (a subjective concept fabricated by us that changes as times goes), and think about the practical side of things. Had he succeeded in the culling of Stratholme, doesn't matter whatever judgment fell upon him, by men or divine, the end result would be that the Scourge wouldn't have continued to kill hundreds of thousands more people.
And these people that were killed later, if you ask them, "would you kill some folks at Stratholme now to save your life later?", I'm sure most would say yes, like all those moral paradoxes scenarios we put together. So much for morality 😄
Good point, but from a practicality standpoint there was never winning in stratholme, it was a trap. And yeah from a moral standpoint there is no winning for Arthas either, he's either a monster for culling the city, or a monster for abandoning it
When people claim Morality is subjective are people who want to hurt others without a care.
Arthas did nothing wrong.
What happens after he loses his mind due to Frostmourne has no relevance here.
At the culling of Stratholme he did what only a king thinking about his country could've done while Jaina and Uther could only condemn him when they themselves were of no use in this situation.
no king, no matter how great, can save his country alone. Jaina and Uther were of no use because he didn't even let them suggest what to do.
"The Runeblade you now carry was enchanted to steal souls....yours was the first it claimed." "Then I'll have to make do without one."
@@zagorim7469
Asking for a suggestion from a guy who lacked understanding towards the Plague would take too much time.
Jaina didn't even propose a single idea despite her understanding of the Plague, meaning, even she should've accepted that it was the choice to make. She just lacked the willingness to do it.
What they lacked at that point was time because, a few moments later, the Plague was already kicking and Malganis already arrived.
Arthas did do nothing wrong, the only choise he can be judge on was the culling, when he was in his 20s. In a mediaval fantasy world where science barely exists the cures of illnesses comes down to the light, healers from all realms use it to heal people, arthas tried to heal people with the plague in a village where he killed kelthuzad, and he failed he saw that the light could not cure the plague ( in wow we players find out that there is no cure for the plague its unstopable) So arthas upon reaching strathholme makes a choise, kill everyone inside, there is no way to see whos infected or not, and yes inocent people died. But what choise did he have, okey seal the city and let everyone there be transformed and die and then only after kill them?? or let people out and 100% the plague would spread, he did the only option he really had. And then comes nothrend where yes THERE he makes a bad choise he takes the blade even after muradin tells him no. Thats the only wrong choise he made, and as soon as he touched the blade he died....YES many people skip the cutscene in warcraft 3 where the dreadlord tells arthas " that balde takes the soul of everything it touchs, your soul was the first one it consumed" Arthas died when he grabbed the blade thats why when he kills his father and land he feels nothing, not happyness nor sadness nothing at all.
So thats the only wrong choise that ARTHAS the prince the young man does.
The culling was not even a choise, because if you read the novels and comics taht are canon arthas asks the light for help in the culling and the light leavs him, she does not help him, the light in wow only helps you if you believe in what you are doing, example the scarlet crusade can use the light to kill everyone. The light makes no choises of good and evil it has no morals, if you believe 100% in soemthign it helps you, arthas didnt think it was the right choise, he didnt want to do it but he "had to" there was no option.
Lets take real life as an example, altho its a game we can do a comparison.
The plague the black plague, if someone was infected you killed the person and burned the body, lets say you are a knight trying with doctors etc to control the plague that destroyed europe and killed millions, you enter a home and see a family of 6, 4 infected coughting blood and 2 next to them that seem fine, would you really take the risk and put them i nquarantine with other people that might be okey or you do the only choise you have.
My point in this mega text that i hope people read until the end is that arthas didnt do anything wrong , but also he didnt do somethign right, he did the only option he had, the world is not black or white, theres alot of grey in it. the bread analogy works perfectly, but lets say theres another person, me and a man see a fish we both want it to feed our familys, if we dont grab it and feed our children they will die, if i kill the man and save my family im "killing" by default that mans children. So am i doing somethign wrong well no and also yes, im dooming a family to death but saving mine, and if the man kills me his on the same boat, its not about right or wrong its the only choise we have.
So arthas did WHAT HE HAD TOO should be the better phrase to be used imo
Sorry for long text, loved the video and love the lore.
If you read this far love you all have a incredible rest of a year :)
There isnt even a cure for the plague in today WOW lore
Even if he would not purge the city, because some of the people were not infected, these people would have been killed and turned by the undead, so they were already dead anyway.
He only does the most reasonable things giving his knowledge, running out of time and his small recourses. If he would succeed he would be praised like a hero. Even if he hadn't touch the sword and just died at the north he still would've win, because cult is already reviled and crushed by him while plague is not spreading anymore.
So he did absolutely nothing morally wrong, he just make a mistake that costed him everything in the end. His actions before that was 100% justified, his actions after that are on completely different being, not on him since "Arthas" has already lost his soul and as good as dead.
The Culling _horrified_ people, he would have never been praised as a hero for it. He would have always been relived for it, Stratholme would have been his vilest action. It might very well have made people see him unfit for kingship, and the Cult of the Damned isn't crushed. It has been temporarily defeated and forced into hiding again, so we're back at square one.
@@DominionSorcerer Cult is crushed, they stop all their activities and lost most of their members with no hope of getting back without help of death knight. Like not all the naziz are dead rn but 3rd rich is long gone and will never return.
And about horrified people - yeah, i remember how horrified people were singing songs and throwing flowers towards Arthas after he returned.
I get that some people can't stand when good people do questionable things mate, but based on what we know from the game his actions were fully justified and his people were visibly agree with it.
The only one who might still be bitching is an old coward Uther, but since he abandoned his people and his prince in a time of need nobody cares about him anymore.
@@annormal1414 the Cult isn't crushed, their activities are only temporarily halted and many cultists yet remain. They have been forced into hiding, but that's about it. Arthas was able to facilitate their return much more quickly because his return and subsequent patricide threw Lordaeron into chaos and afterwards it fell in a matter of days.
And yeah. People were cheering on Arthas after it was believed he had returned home from Northrend victoriously - it was the return of their beloved darling prince after he had been gone for months, and he had saved the kingdom from then tyranny of the undead and demons. Good actions will quickly make people forget about bad actions.
Based on what we know from the game, however, were his actions fully justified? Most of the people in Stratholme weren't infected. Arthas didn't even kill everyone in Stratholme, he left a lot of people still alive. He didn't burn any of the bodies they'd slain, leaving them to rot in the streets while torcing the city.
@@DominionSorcerer
I say it pretty much safe to assume that if Arthas wouldn't return from the north scattered and beaten cult would just go instinct without any possibilities to do something. So yeah, despite that death knight Arthas managed to rebuild the cult , paladin prince Arthas crushed it for good prior. The only reason how they were rebuild so easily is the plot.
Without a cure and any experience of how to deal with these problem you either kill everybody or face an undead army and lost way more people, as simple as that. And i say all population are infected, or at least most of them and anybody who for some implausible reason still doesn't will be killed by the horde of zombies right now, because people start turning right when our heroes came in town.
Also you can't assume that he just left, we don't know anything of it. We saw some people gather and burning the bodies. Jaina comes when work is already goin, old fart returns after her.
So it's much better to assume that the only person with enough influence - Arthas - ordered to burn the bodies before he left. Also if everybody in town was slain - means he killed everybody. But if he didn't kill 100% of population that means he mostly killed the infected ones, there for he did even better job at dealing with situation.
@@annormal1414 the cult was defeated, but not scattered. It was in hiding, that's the lore from Warcraft 3. Death knight Arthas managed to rally the cult so quickly because Lordaeron was days from being destroyed after Terenas' death, no one was able to set up a good defence.
And no, I can assume that. The guy who actually made the Culling mission in Warcraft 3 and the subsequent cinematic literally says Arthas left without burning the dead. Why would Arthas do otherwise? Mal'ganis was forced to go to Northrend and the Scourge, as far as Arthas knew, was defeated in Lordaeron. His mind was deadset on revenge no matter the cost so he left for Northrend immediately.
So as someone deep into the topic - i argued with Blizzard here too cause the culling DID accomplish a LOT. Its a common military strategy called scorched earth.
The inhabitants of Stratholme were already infected, they already turned when Arthas showed up and became servants of the scourge but yet in a weak state.
So by killing the civilians that havent turned yet he
1) reduced enemy forces and their power
2) gave the people peace in death saving their souls as they would have been lost after turning
3) it was mercykilling. The people were doomed to become bloodthirsty cannibals devouring their loved ones. Ask yourself, if you were in that position would you rather be killed swiftly with a hammer to the head or go through the incredible pain of turning undead, loosing your soul and then attacking the people you loved and held dear? Yeah id rather die quick thx.
The culling was the best strategic descission that could be made at that point in time - there is no way around it and every military thinking person would have done the exact same and we even have historical examples of real life where similiar methods were used to stop the plague from spreading and killing even more people where infected towns were burned down to save cities.
For Arthas did nothing wrong - he did BUT...1) most evil stuff he did, he did AFTER being corrupted by frostmourne or after merging with nerzuhl so he wasnt himself anymore.
Similarily he did show arrogance before that but all chars in warcraft have flaws. That said the tragedy of Arthas story IS that he tried to do everything wrong, acting for a greater good and willing to do anything to achieve it. Its a cautionary tale of fanatism - the greater good might not be worth the price to pay for it.
That said we also know for a fact that without Arthas holding the scourge back it would have conquered the entire world of Azeroth so he in the end did acutally prevent the destruction of "his people".
I also like to compare however as it is said Arthas is irredeemable despite having the excuse of having been mindcontrolled. Ok, but what about Jaina Proudmoore then? Her actions were outright genocidal, breaking the peace, warmongering causing another war with the Horde, she was so bad people believed she was replaced with a Dreadlord. But this bloodthirsty monster got a redemption story?
What about Sylvannas, she caused more death and destruction than Arthas did with her new plague, the rekinling of the alliance-horde war, burning down Teldrassil, enslaving the valkyr...that arguably most evil of all warcraft characters - cause she doesnt even do it for a greater good just out of hatred for the living - that one got a redemption story. So if those 2 women get exhonorated than so should Arthas who wasnt nearly as bad as these 2.
Also the culling isnt something unique in Warcraft just the scale is. The nightelves had no issue culling furbolgs that were about to be corrupted, same for moonkin and corrupted animals and they cold have afforded to look for a cure instead but didnt. The bloodelfs had no issue culling the wretched and those about to loose control, and dont even get me started on the forsaken. The red dragons did kill their own allies at wrathgate and so on yet i dont hear complaints about these events and tactics that by the way, the Lightforged also use. A lot actually
Those are some compelling points for sure. When it comes to point 3, yes me personally I would prefer the choice you mentioned - but the problem I have with that is I don’t speak for every citizen of stratholme.
But yes, scorched earth is a good point you bring up. Just look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that aweful act was the beginning of 80ish years of peace amongst western nations. That kind of logic is why (in another video I explain this part) after careful consideration I came to the conclusion that Arthas made the right choice. But after making that video, listening to designer Dave I’ve come to the conclusion that it was the wrong choice.
The way I see it the culling is an awful but effective strategy, the problem is if you’re going to do the cull you need to cull EVERYONE and Arthas doesn’t. He gets into a twisted race with Mal’Ganis and culls about a third to half of the city before abandoning the cull to chase after Mal’Ganis. I get that percentage from the 100 citizens he culls compared to the city population itself.
Another thing is, if this was a normal zombie infection as we see in movies and tv and the infection was spread by biting then I’d be more inclined in saying the cull was the right choice - but it’s not. It’s only spread through consuming corrupted grain, which not every citizen would have done or had time to do and there would presumably be citizens who didn’t consume the bread at all.
And ultimately everything they were doing in the North was meaningless. They were already warned by medivh that the North was lost and there was nothing they could do to save it - now of course, why listen to some rambling mad man you don’t know - but jaina was able to sense that he knew what he was talking about and they had already seen enough evidence to know that the North was indeed lost. I’ll just say this, there are arguments for culling stratholme - it’s a major city that if it fell to the undead it would bolster their forces - but it doesn’t matter. The undead could care less about stratholme, it was all a trap for Arthas because once Arthas had been angered enough to follow Mal’Ganis to northrend he just abandons culling the city and leaves it to the undead - but the undead leave too because it doesn’t matter if they convert the city or not in the grand scheme of things. Arthas was the prize and he had enough evidence not to fall into the trap. And the last thing I’ll say about it is, although I’m also against this too, the method in which Arthas chose to cull the city made no sense, especially when the population of the city is larger (it seems people can’t agree on the size of the city). The larger the city is, the less likely going in and culling citizens one by one is going to work. Of course you aren’t going to get everyone and people have time to get away. The most effective way is to do a controlled burn of the city and that is probably worse than the way Arthas did (which is one of many reasons why I’m against this method) but it would have at least been more effective and saved the lives of Arthas’ troops.
@@AlexBarrGameDev ah a man of culture i like that =) The Designer Interview is what got me hating on Blizzard, its a whole other story how they completly f ed the lore up after Legion and how all the retcons made everything worse - heck the Jailer basicly robbed every single warcraft character of their agency i.e. nobody would be at fault for anything they did cause they only did what they did cause of Jailer. I think Blizzard lost the plot nd wow should have ended with Legion where every major story threat was done and character stories had a satisfying conclusion.
Anyway - my point is that Arthas (inspired by king Arthur) shows us a story that is told in wow again and again. Arthas tried to do what is right for a greater good willing to do morally wrong things in the process. Its the same thing Sargeras does. Its the same thing Nerzuhl did, its the same thing the ebon Legion does, its what Sylvannas uses as excuse. And the thing i find compelling is that they all may actually be right. IF the voidlords are indeed unstoppable and want to plunge the universe into endless agony...Sargeras is right and the universe is better of dead. If the legion wants to wipe out the entire universe Nerzuhl is right and killing most of the living to have an army capable of stopping the legion is right. If the forsaken cant reproduce without a new plague or enslaving valkyr, then indeed Sylvannas does the right thing for HER people. I like stories that are above childish good vs evil stories. They have a place and can exist and its not like Lordof the rings wasnt a great classic good vs evil story but i prefer more debth to a story.
Hence i love Arthas for being the embodiment of "the road to hell is plastered with good intentions"
Yes the plague didnt spread via bite that is correct but the grain in stratholme would have been redestributed to other villages, and the villagers wold have been soldiers in the opponents armies and those killed by the zombies would have been raised by the scourges necromancers.
I think at the time, with the information Arthas had, he made the right call but he couldnt bear it either which is why he lost the connection to the light, and why it made him priorise revenge on Malghanis over protecting his people which in his mind was one and the same.
You make a great deal about the strategy Arthas used to cull the city - it was awefully ineffective and could have been done better. And i agree it was all a trap for Arthas.
Im also not saying that Arthas didnt do evil shit - the mercenary incident in northrend? Yeah absolutely mad, yet again a tactic that real commanders used as well and do to this day see false flag operations. If your people aint willing to fight for you, do something terrible, say "they" did it and you have an army rallied.
My point is...if Arthas is irredeemebly evil...than so is Sylvannas, then so is Jaina, then so is Varian, Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan...yet all of them get redemption arcs and no one is complaining about their shit. That seems like a terrible double standard.
The video that made me go "huh?" is Garrosh did nothing wrong cause...i can list a lot of things he did wrong out of the top of my head and i dont just mean morally but strategicly and from a flawed motivation XD
what urks me is that Arthas story was, from warcraft 3 to wotlk a story of tragedy, a good soul ending up evil,. his last words show that he wasnt himself under frostmournes influence and that he didnt wanna do it. What they did to his legacy is beyond disrespectful. Arthas was once one of the most beloved heroes of Lordaeron and now they puss on his grave for stuff others did as well that the same people love and praise for the same evil shit.
@@OrkarIsberEstar yeah I prefer stories with depth too - that’s what made me love Warcraft 3 when I first played it as a kid because the culling of stratholme was the first mission/story to really make me think am I doing a good or bad thing? And it annoys me when a story could have more depth and doesn’t like in the movie Avatar if they had made unobtainium necessary for the survival of earth and humans then all of a sudden that story gets more compelling.
As for a lot of the lore you mention, I really don’t know all of it - I’ve only played so far into wow but I do know a lot about the jailor now having conversations like these with people and it frustrates me as well.
@@AlexBarrGameDev sorry if i came off rude in my opening, im having these discussions on many youtubers comment section and most are...lets say not willing to have a discussion or claiming lore facts that they made up (cough doronsmovies is really bad at this^^) so im used to not having a reasonable discussion, i am positively surprised and you got a new subscriber.
I do Warcraft Rp since Burning crusade came out and well the history of lore changes is a long one and while there were a few good retcons like Sargeras origin story, most were bad. The Jailor just retocnned the entire history of everything on azeroth for the worse. I think Rings of Power was very very very bad for the retcons to the lore but the Shadowlands expansion did more damage with just a single NPC.
That said i still love warcraft, to me personally its the best game exclusive universe ever made (yes i include D&D) but in my headcannon i refuse to accept anything after Legion, to me it ended there and while i cant stop torturing myself by keeping up with lorechanges, i do my best to ignore it ever happened and my advice is...if you can stop yourself, dont read up on wow lore post Legion, its just really bad.
I thought him doing everything wrong was the point.
I think the main bad thing Arthus didn't do was obviously not spam training griffins to beat malganis' base.
Fookin' finally someone else is saying it.
Arthas used to be my favorite character following WC3. So many people love the Arthas novel that I figured it would cement my fondness for the character even more. That novel singlehandedly ruined Arthas for me. It portrays him as narcissistic, arrogant, and petulant that seeing him make all the choices he does leading to Frostmourne and the desolation of Lordaeron afterward seems like a foregone conclusion once any threat of significance was placed before him.
LMAO, did you happen to notice the release date for the video you keep referencing?
Hiru does a video like this every year, same date. 🤔
Yep, I’m aware. But just read the comments, people are taking this seriously
@@AlexBarrGameDev they are either trolling or arent worth argueing with because that kind of stupidity can't be fixed.(edit: for clarity, they fell for his joke.)
I would love to hear your thoughts on how Kael'thas was handled in WoW compared to WC3:TFT. :D
If Arthas went back to his dad (pre-Frostmourne) and talked about how to deal with the Undead, the latter would just side with Uther (whatever that guy's gonna say), since Uther is more tempered than the prince. It's useless to negotiate.
I love your Videos and your takes on one of my favorite videogames of all time (probably my favorite one) and i am missing one final take here and eveywhere else people talk about Arthas. Let me explain:
The story of Arthas is a grand one but the relatability of this moment comes from the fact that we are all angry sometimes and we are all drawn to giving into this anger.
Its most easily observed in romantic relationships. How often do loving parties behave in quite ridiculous ways due to intense emotions?
Whenever i was in such situations, i always had at least a glimmer of consciousness telling me "yo dude, this is not the path of good, of love. This is not what you would want if you were in your right mind right now" BUT I didnt always listen to this voice.
I sometimes treated people around me with less love than they deserved because i gave into my anger.
The tale of Arthas is a reminder that every single day in your life you have the choice to turn around and do the right thing. But Arthas didnt, at any point. And just like a normal human he was consumed by grief and self hatred and suffered because of it.
Just like we do when we do the wrong thing. And i believe (almost) everyone who beats his wife or children or mistreats his loved ones feels a similar way as Arthas.
People do horrible things because they give into their anger or other emotions and we often forget how EASY it is to do so. We are only a sliver of sanity away from doing the same thing.
Thats why its so important to always feed that voice of consciousness that reminds us of our true intentions and lets us act accordingly. THAT is NOT always easy, but it is always possible.
Arthas didnt do it and he lost everything because of it. Dont be like Arthas the next time you are angry.
THAT is the true lesson from this story.
This is absolutely the best way of putting it and why I’ve been trying to stress that the way Arthas behaved was wrong.
3:40 I actually think you got it wrong here. Before I continue, just to clarify, I THINK ARTHAS DID THE WRONG THING. But in his head, this was his reasoning:
Because Arthas killed his horse, the lesson is that, when the time comes next, that a sacrifice must be made, that HE (meaning Arthas) would step in that place.
Arthas viewed killing the people in Stratholme as a great sin. A sin which would make him hated for the rest of his life (or unlife as it turned out).
BUT, he did this, because in his mind, it was not about him. He viewed destroying his own reputation and having everyone hate him as OK, if it meant saving his people.
He viewed taking Frostmourne exactly the same way.
"I accept that Frostmourne will destroy my soul, because I owe it to my people. I was responsible for Invincible's death, and if my death/destruction of my soul saves Lordaeron, so be it."
Yeah I agree with this for sure, I just think people take that thinking and say because his intentions were in the right place, that this somehow absolves him from making a mistake
5:27 - if he just listened to Medivh and fled to Kalimdor it would be better but nah. Because of his ego he decided to murder innocent civilians. He's no better than his father Terenas. Because of him Lordaeron was destroyed. People are more valid than the land. You can restore the land, restore the kingdom but you can't restore human lives
He was not only egotistic - he was greedy as well
He can't run away, because only a fraction of people can escape, he says that _all_ of his uninfected(and non-Stratholmian I guess) people are to survive through this plague and _all_ their blood is on his hands
This really explains that we need to judge ourselves by our actions and not just our intentions
Not exactly. I think we need to judge ourselves by our actions and or intentions.
If you do good and have bad intentions, your good deeds will with time water down and become nothing more than a farce.
If you do bad and have good intentions, your intention will suffer under you defending your actions and give ever less disturbances with your deeds.
Something that both you and the original video missed that I honestly think is important to the whole paladin arthas/death knight arthas is that the first soul frostmourne ever claimed was his. It's not ever explicitly stated what losing his soul actually did to him, but it's demonstrated pretty heavily through dialogue in the undead campaign. Especially his conversations with uther in mission 2 and tichondrius in mission 1 where he talks about how he just doesn't feel anything anymore aside from a desire to do what the blade tells him. So while he absolutely has self control and is capable of making his own decisions, he's a stronger servant and general that way, I think it's a more complex situation than just being his shadow because his core motivations are being influenced by outside factors and he doesn't truly have free will. When frostmourne was shattered every soul it ever stole was released, and that includes Arthas's soul. The reason Arthas was finally able to feel remorse and had those final words was because his soul had been returned to him and only in his final moments, with his soul returned and freed, was he able to look back and feel horror at everything he had done while undead because he previously lacked those emotions entirely.
And then Shadowlands happened and he got to relive that horror through being forced into a blade purely for the pleasure of being tortured more. His soul wasn't even needed for the blade the power came from the shadow crystal embedded in the hilt, the soul was just because torture is what the jailer did best.
Another thing about Arthas having autonomy as death knight is violation and torturing of Sylvanas. Ner'zhul didn't care about personal grievances so long as his goals are achieved, whereas defiling and borderline r@pe imagery of Sylvanas' torture in the comics which he was carrying out himself for near a year according to the story, felt and were painted as sadist, cruel and personal.
Even in the Sealed Chest where he kept his most priced keepsakes, amongst all the heartwarming items, he kept vial of the Blood of Sylvanas from days of him torturing her.
Say what you want about how Alex "Women abuser" Afrasiabi, who was writting Sylvanas as a cold heart, villainess "Bitch"(Garrosh was his favorite character) and made Sylvanas go completely off the walls by the time of 9.2.5 due to Danuser crafting Jailer and that BS story arc. But before Afrasiabi kept dripping small hints (like raising blood elves in SoO which went against her personal beliefs and trauma that was inflicted on her by Arthas) and Danuser finishing both Sylvanas and Arthas off in terms of lore consistency, Sylvanas was well written, most interesting character WC IP had, Arthas was simply more iconic.
but ghouls are so cute there's no way making more of them is wrong
At 12:12 Hirumaredx does not make it clear, but it is not just about ending the World, but essentially gaining total or more control over it. And yes denying more power to preserve the life of others does sound like a moral decision and while it does not necessarily make you a good person, it tells a lot and means there must be morals working inside of him. Think how many dictators with Arthas' power at that point would infact use that power to gain control over the World, even if it means killing others.
Arthas by no means is flawless, or sinless, but under normal conditions he would not have become the Lich King... and this is what makes it a tragedy. In a same fashion another fictional figure Anakin Skywalker became evil, because many of the conditions he was under in often forced his hand. Neither had some megalomaniac goal or were after some riches, one wanted to defend his homeland and the other wanted to protect his love. And it is a shame what both became (morally speaking). However with Arthas, it is a strong point, that he was the first to have his soul/will be consumed by Frostmourne, which slowly twisted him into the Deathknight, and this is why I believe, that inspite of his flaws and sins is at the very least a decent man. He was not in control. Whereas Darth Vader was, yet decided to embrace his new life and renounced it later. Arthas never had the option to renounce his state, as the video put it he fell into a trap and there was simply no way out. Many others however do have a way out, but stay in their evil ways...
His friends and mentors weren't tricked, but then again they never offered a viable alternate solution. Uther never showed his other way, the King was not having the situation under control and Muradin at the end essentially advised Arthas to concede. If Arthas was presented with a choice just maybe one tactically and strategically less sound, then we could say he picked badly. But he was not, he could choose between doing nothing and letting everything play out (will not end well), he could choose to listen to Medivh (a total stranger, ontop of this the guy who lead the orcs into Azeroth) or continuing on and eliminating those who orchestrated the plague (the move which seems in his position for obvious reasons the most logical).
Arthas had little choice in the matter that's what people typically fail to see and of the few choices he had he arguably makes the most reasonable ones with the info/time he is given even going against his own morality while everyone acts emotional and provides 0 solutions to the monumental problems ahead. Those who say Arthas made the wrong choices typically cant offer a better one and Im not only talking about the culling. Arthas was a doomed man in the long run and so were his people, what makes him the hero is how immediately after he realizes that he becomes willing to sacrifice all he is to prevent the inevitable regardless of whether he fails or not. In the warcraft lore nowadays there are few stories and are this grey. It is typically all black and white, right and wrong. All choices Arthas was given were plainly horrible in the long run and in order to do good he had to act bad. That does not make him a villain it makes him a victim of a scheme that was made long before he was born
This^
One problem here is that even Jaina, a person who also knew the Plague, DID nothing. She didn't propose another option, despite her knowledge as a wizard, nor did she try and stop Arthas.
Meaning, even she understood that it was the only choice they had. Unfortunately, she wanted to keep herself clean and let Arthas bear all the burden of picking that choice.
As for Uther;
1. He didn't knew about it, meaning they'd have to spend time to explain it to him.
2. As a Paladin and an Old Man, he would've taken ages to form a plan trying to avoid the "worst option".
And that's the problem, Arthas knew they don't have time.
Literally this. They could have at least stopped Malganis from infected the healthy citizens, but instead they let them die and bugger off, because they can't stand the sight. Arthas was very flawed, but he at least realized that someone had to do something and not just go away and hope that the dreadlord is not going to use the undead horde to kill the entire city.
I feel like a lot of people miss a critical fact about Arthas' decision to initiate the purge.
The previous mission lasted 3 days and 3 nights, where Arthas got no sleep and was constantly under attack. It's implied they go straight from that mission to Stratholme, without delay. 3 days with no sleep will make you delirious, and even hallucinate. 3 days of constant fighting will lead to you being incredibly stressed.
Of course Arthas made really REALLY dumb fucking decisions at Stratholme, he wasn't in any mental state to make good decisions. Which was planned for. You think those three days were an accident? No, it was all part of the plan to fuck with Arthas and get him where the Lich King wanted him to be.
Stratholme was doom before he came. Sure, Arthas was a hotheaded person. But there was not hope for Straholme. There was not cure for the Scourge Virus. If Arthas have not purger the city it will leave more Undead.
Well that and also he had no other choice:
if Arthas hadn't gone in there, Mal'Ganis would have almost certainly turned the entire city into undead and then probably used that army to attack the next one.
When Arthas is done, a lot of people are dead at his hands but... the city survived and the undead horde is stopped. Horrid as it was, it prevented a greater evil and there was no alternative to stopping them. There was no cure or efficient means to restrain all the infected civilians.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel but Stratholme didn't survive. Arthas didn't even cull the entire city, so he's clearly not there for that if you look at his actions. Arthas was there to hunt down Mal'ganis but the moment Mal'ganis left, Arthas left too, leaving the city and a lot of survivors left behind - survivors that very well might be infected, who now have to burn their own dead and their city.
@@DominionSorcerer That's not accurate at all. He literally killed enough infected to stop the city from falling. That was literally the point of the mission.
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel how isn't it accurate? Arthas ultimately wasn't there to save Stratholme, he went there to hunt down Mal'ganis. When Mal'ganis leaves Stratholme, Arthas leaves too, leaving the city and countless survivors behind. Many of whom could be infected.
Let's face the facts: (fictitious facts in the game)
1. Frostmourne has overwhelming mind control power. This is repeatedly mentioned throughout Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne expansion. Even when the Lich King was weakened due to Illidan's magic, Arthas remained loyal when Sylvanas and ghouls went rogue. This is due to the sword's powers as explained by Kelthuzad.
2. In Warcraft 3, Medivh told Arthas:
"This land is lost! The shadow has already fallen and nothing you can do will deter it. If you truly wish to save your people, lead them across the sea, to the west."
Which meant that culling of Stratholme or not, Lordaeron will fall to the scourge. Later events proved this statement to be correct. Which meant if Arthas did sail to Kalimdor with his people, we may never see the Lich King as he was in WOW. Maybe he would take another paladin or someone else but that's irrelevant to the point. This might be Arthas' biggest mistake in his life. From the scourge's point of view, the culling of Stratholme is irrelevant to their goal.
This meant that even if Arthas stayed in Lordaeron during the entire campaign of Warcraft 3 and combated the plague with non violent means (quarantine, holy magic, medicine, snake oil, etc.). The scourge would still take Lordaeron and Arthas regardless.
It's like Medivh said, the only way is to the west.
The only human who saw truth in these words was Jaina.
3. Medivh told Jaina:
Medivh: "The dead in this land might lie still for the time being, but don't be fooled. Your young prince will find only death in the cold north."
Jaina: "You! Arthas is only doing what he believes is right!"
Medivh: "Commendable as that may be, his passions will be his undoing. It falls to you now, young sorceress. You must lead your people west to the ancient lands of Kalimdor. Only there can you combat the shadow and save this world from the flame."
Both of them are factually correct.
4. At the end of Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne expansion, Arthas broke the ice block encasing the Lich King and took his helm/crown. Then the Lich King said: "Now, we are one." This meant either their souls merged to become one or that Nerzhul posessed Arthas' body. Either way, Arthas was powerless to the Lich Kings actions from this point on if he wasn't affectively already under mind control.
5. Arthas has made many mistakes that lead him to become the death knight and consequently the Lich King. People can judge him however they want but most, including the narrator of this video, agrees that his intentions were good. As the video have mentioned repetitively.
6. Arthas did kill Malganis.
7. Varian Wrynn, a childhood play mate of Arthas took the role as King of Stormwind, the next human capital after the fall of Lordaeron.
Facts in the real world:
For the most parts of the free world, when a criminal is on trial. His intentions absolutely matter and will affect his sentence more or less depending on the scenario and crime committed.
For example, if I was performing CPR and accidently crushed his ribs and killed him. I am an idiot and should be ashamed. I killed a person. It is my fault that he is dead. However, it's unlikely that I will get a death sentence. Regardless of where this took place. It is even less likely that I will get a death sentence if there were people around me telling me to push harder or holding my hands. Crimes should and will, if caught, be punished. The intentions of the criminal will also almost always affect their sentence.
The thing is he did not even try to save the people of the city during the cull. He treated every single person as already infected and that is not the actions of a paladin.
And if he didn't? If he saw a healthy looking family and told them to get to safety.. then when they are on the road, in another village, the husband turns and spreads the plague of undeath from there.
Geez don't evacuate them right away then. Keep them within the city limits(presumably it has walls, they work both ways).
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.....
Those were difficult times. There was a war going on. You would have done the same in his shoes.
Arthas was good before becoming litch king...
I'm DesignerDave and I approve this message. :)
Hey thanks!
Nah, you're wrong. You just INTENDED the level to play out in a certain way, but it didn't :)
@@rafairacki9302 -_-
You're DesignerDave and had no control over Warcraft 3 Lore or story progression. You have zero authority to dictate lore ramifications of a map you made, because you only made the map, not the story.
@@frostmagemarii 100% False, I worked with Metzen on the story and provided feedback and wrote my own lines for the mission. I created the cinematic, the pacing, the gameplay mechanics, the units you start with... EVERYTHING within the map is my direct work or directly influenced by me. You trying to rewrite history for events you have NO KNOWLEDGE OF is pathetic... -_-
Get a life, loser. Get a freaking life.
It actually worked btw, Arthas defeated the plague of undead in Lordearon, Medivh was wrong. If he had not gone to Northrend that would've been it, just prepare for the next ploy from the Dreadlords.
I think the other people could've stopped Arthas like Uther, Jaina and his father like stand in front of him but they didn't do anything they just left him and that was wrong from them plus I know he could have done the right thing
So why exactly is culling the city bad?
It's not, that was the only logical solution...but brainlets can't understand that because "le killing" = "bad :("
Kill people = bad
Turn bad at the end of the road to return to turn this same city all into undead = bad
Reforged = bad
Also remember that’s Atheroth, a dark place to live where war is something normal and we got a twisted morality there as a something normal .
Strathholme was a point of grey moral peak where we got a lesser evil to win over bigger .
Arthas is a prince who must decided the fate of his own people .
If there was medieval problem with even a black plague , people didn’t saw something really evil in idea of saving a millions on a cost of thousands
I’m not trying to justifying genoside but we can understand all this better and not play a white knight from our point of view
Interesting. This also goes into the Anduin problem in Shadowlands. Where does the wonderful, pure Anduin stop and the monster begin? Yeah, the Jailer (what a horrible bad guy btw) took him over as a zombie minion, but Anduin was in there. Could he be blamed for not fighting harder and kicking the control the Jailer had? At the end, there was the same type of remorse, that he could have fought harder....and that he kinda liked the bad guy thing and that made him uncomfortable.
How then is this not like Arthas? First: the Frostmourne blade and the helm were made by the Runecarver by the orders of the Jailer to ensnare someone on Azeroth so he could get a toe-hold on the planet. Arthas was that "someone" so how is the acquisition of the weapon by the Jailer (the weapon being Arthas) any different than Anduin's being the weapon? Was what was driving the actions of Arthas, the Lich King curse of the Jailer driving it, or was he fighting it with the shred Arthas had a inside? And did he really fight against the curse or, like Anduin, did he like this bad guy thing just a bit? If Arthas was doing what he thought was correct, misguided as it was, and the blade turned him into someone evil after he acquired it in a bid to end the plague by ending Mal'ganis.
The Jailer was behind both things, so how is Anduin any different than Arthas?
This is a very good question, and unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the lore up until that point so I don't know the story of Anduin. But with Arthas, the point is pretty clear to me.
Because even if we say that once Arthas "fell into the trap" and wielded frostmourne, that ALL of his agency was gone, and that therefor "the original" Arthas cannot be judged for the actions after he wielded the sword - even in that scenario we can still judge Arthas BEFORE he fell into the trap.
When we are introduced to Arthas he wants to massacre a clan of Orcs indiscriminately, he then goes on to cull Stratholme, chase Mal'Ganis and burn his men's ships down when ordered to come home and then his friend is killed because of his actions. There is a pretty quick build up in bad decisions.
Since I don't know the story of Anduin, I'll try to give my take through logic and hopefully it'll apply, but the way I see it, we have to look at the choices these characters have available. If you have a starving family and you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, sure it is unethical to steal the bread, but having the family starve to death is even worse and you might not have any other options so you pick the best one - save your family. So It just comes down to what actions you have available to you, choosing between which of the actions available that leads to the greatest amount of good to the most amount of people and at the same time which action leads to the least amount of harm done to the least amount of people.
Arthas had some tough calls, and there very often weren't ideal outcomes either way. but he always chose the worst options IMO and that is what led him to falling into the trap, so he is at the very least responsible up until wielding frostmourne.
As for Anduin, I can't say, but since you've played it and know the story I'd just ask: did he have any better choices available to him before he became controlled by the Jailor?
Because Arthas willingly took up Frostmourne, even after being told it was cursed. Anduin had it forced upon him.
Arthas was full control before and after took Frostmourne. Anduin was Mind Control by the Jailer.
I don't know Warcraft lore but i know thismuch, as a Necromancer, killing everyone and turning them to your undead army is ALWAYS a bad idea, the obvios reason would be that you need a healthy LIVING population to be able to keep your army growing.
the less obvios reason is that you'd be just bored the hell out of your mind for a while untill you encounter something you won't be able to overcome by yourself, be it by lack of forces or creativity due to lack of perspective.
you really gathered him ijbol
The road to Hell is paved with...
Everything Arthas did is objectively good, as we later learn that his actions are largely fixed points in time and crucial for reality to continue. Not only was he a young man being mislead by actual demonic forces, but time itself had fated him to do it.
So he really can't be guilty of anything, other than playing his role like everyone else does. There is no free will in Azeroth.
I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Even if the history is set in stone, that doesn't excuse the decisions people make which causes that history to happen. Until a person is being mind controlled, they're responsible for their own actions.
Reason is because most people can't face the facts that Arthas was evil for the sake for be evil. Ever before he took Frostmune, Arthas was already a bitter, prideful, and vindictive person.
His fall was for his own humorous, and no for unse force. He did everything wrong out of pride. The same Anakin Skywalke fall for his own humorous, and no because a unsee forces.
Arthas killing everyone in Stratholme is simply a mercy i would appreciate a lot.
It would be a weight off my mind to know my corpse wouldn't wander around, hurting and infecting other innocent people.
If i was a citizen of Stratholme, i would seek Arthas and make sure he killed me.
Arthas is pure evil idc he might still love Jena but killing your own father is unforgivable
I often make a habit of poking Dave with "Arthas Did Nothing Wrong" to the point that it's a running gag in his streams. The thing is, I don't agree with Dave on the matter for a very simple reason.
5:49
This is it. You nailed it. This is the thing that deflates both yours and Dave's argument about Arthas. On your first playthrough, the players and Arthas both lack for information and are doing what they think is right based on that limited amount of information.
You know what Arthas doesn't get though? A second playthrough. People who played the campaign go back to The Scourge of Lordaeron and then proceed to dunk on Arthas with information he could not possibly know. Nor is he the guy who built the map. Stratholme wasn't even built to Dave's tastes. In one of his streams, he said that he didn't want all of the civilians to turn and force you to destroy potentially innocent people, but that's not what made it into the final game. Likewise, if the mission is failed, the zombies turn _immediately_ and overrun the Alliance base. So it's understood within the game that failure means a tide of the dead will overrun the Northlands. Per Medivh's statements after the culling, Arthas did successfully manage to buy time. Given that both culling and not culling result in the undead appearing in force anyway, the culling is the strategically superior option because it allows for recovery and more time to act.
6:31
Dude, do you think Arthas can see the floating text that positively identifies who an individual ghoul is? You also can't say for certain that this isn't in fact an Easter Egg because Lil' Timmy can also be found in Theramore when Rexxar shows up. The the UI and easter eggs do not constitute an argument because they are not visible to Arthas. They're utterly irrelevant for argumentation about the character's motivations because something like ghoul Timmy is not knowable to Arthas and it's not clear that it isn't just a joke.
Beyond this, I would like to point out two things: Tichondrius admitting that Arthas' soul was stolen by Frostmourne and Kel'thuzad stating that Arthas was deliberately chosen by the Lich King to be his champion. Given Arthas was facing off against ages old demonic forces and a demigod that could infiltrate minds, how was a 23 year old supposed to deal with that?
I actually got Dave to pause and think about this in one of his streams when I pointed out that Arthas was like, 23 when this happened and Americans are wrong to trust 18 year olds with student loans they can't pay back. Likewise, the much older Uther failed completely in his duties to be an older man and mentor and instead got into a pissing match with a frat aged hothead. Uther should know better. He was 64 when he died and he was a paladin who very specifically was a source of wisdom and refuge for Arthas.
Amazingly, there was even a bit of good writing in Shadowlands where Uther takes responsibility for failing Arthas. Cuz he did.
I think purging the city was warranted, although it likely should have been possible to save some people. But having them turn into aggressive zombies that then attack and possibly infect others....that would lead to a lot more death. Its more pragmatic good rather than morally good. The clip from the developer just shows you should burn them after killing them, which, Arthas probably should have known.
After Frostmourne though? Its really hard to say how much of Arthas' will remained, especially since the writers at Blizzard went completely of the fucking rails. Although, using Bolvar as an Example, Arthas had some issues in comparison, mainly his recklessness.
When Uther and Jaina abandoned Arthas, it made his fall all that easier. He made the right call with Stratholm and those two put their personal feelings above the good of the kingdom. They loved him and it was good times with ole paladin Arthas when the decision were easy, but the second he had to put on the crown it wasn't fun for them anymore.
Who knows what would have happened if they stayed, but we do what happened when they left.
The dev trying to make a modern day analogy was stupid. There was no Lorderon CDC or an Azeroth doctors without borders. I would bet all the no money I have that had if York had been assaulted by a plague of undeath unleashed by a demon then King Henry might have done the same.
Depends on your viewpoint. If you have a more utilitarian mindset (way more common than you think) then Arthas didn’t really do anything wrong until be picked up frostmourne. As soon as he picked up frostmourne his actions are evil no matter what your viewpoint is.
When it comes to the demonetization of that town. Well.. there was no cure, better to stop the problem at its source than turn into zombies. Thinking there will ever be a cure is too unrealistic and idealistic. There’s one hole in this though: culling them just makes them undead anyway. If that weren’t the case I would back him up here.
I would say that dissension was the first undeniably evil act. Forcing his men to fight a mad war against explicit orders and killing the mercenaries for following his orders is definitely evil.
The culling of Stratholme wasn't morally grey. It was morally correct and the only right decision. Also, if the undead had any will enough to affect the lore then the entire Lorderon wouldn't have died in WC3. The Lich King had control over every undead. That was the Lore. This was 100% true until the Frozen Throne expansion.
Everyone just wants to pretend that their favorite villain was the good guy all along. -_-;
Not all along right up to a point. Also straholm was burned aftewards. That would nto be possible or would cost many more lives if was already full of undead instead of just corpses